Aurin, Ralph

ORAL HISTORY OF RALPH AURIN
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
December 11, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is December 11, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Mr. Ralph Aurin, 130 Emory Lane, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about living in Oak Ridge. Ralph, please state your full name, place of birth, and date please.
MR. AURIN: I’m Ralph E. Aurin, Jr., born in Knoxville, Tennessee. And you need what else?
MR. HUNNICUTT: The date.
MR. AURIN: February 15, 1936.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your father’s name and place of birth?
MR. AURIN: He was Ralph E. Aurin, Sr. and he was born in Knoxville, Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you recall the date?
MR. AURIN: 1906, April 10th, it was 1906.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mother’s maiden name and place of birth and date?
MR. AURIN: Okay. It was Opal Malachote Aurin. Her place of birth was in Missouri. So help me, I can’t think of the name of the town in Missouri. And that was in November of 1912.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history? Do you recall how far he went in school?
MR. AURIN: My father didn’t go but through the eighth grade. I think he did go back and get his GED. His father owned a fair amount of rental property in Knoxville. And I can remember my dad saying that his job was to keep all those places clean. But he did, I think, go back and get a GED.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mom’s school history?
MR. AURIN: She completed high school at Old Knoxville High School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have sisters and brothers?
MR. AURIN: Yes, I have an older sister, Bebe. She’s two years older than I. My next youngest sister is Nancy. Bebe by the way lives in Naples, Florida. Nancy is living in Tacoma, Washington. And those two were born in Knoxville and came with our family to Oak Ridge. My youngest sister Linda was born here in Oak Ridge in 1945. And she’s deceased. She passed away about a year and a half ago.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned your father worked with his father’s rental – with rental property. Is that all of his work history you recall?
MR. AURIN: Well, except prior to coming to Oak Ridge. I don’t know what he did in the interim after the Depression wiped out all of my grandfather’s property. So he didn’t have to worry about cleaning it up anymore. But he did – before coming – before getting the job at Y-12 he was a meter reader for the Knoxville Utility Board. And at that time we had, what, my mother and three children he was trying to support on that particular job. And that’s why it was so grand, to use the word, that he was able to get a job at Y-12. I’ll say that has bound, has boosted our family’s standard of living being able to come over to the Manhattan Project and work. And just think of the jobs that the Manhattan Project did for this region, not only for my father but others. And so it was very instrumental in our family’s life. The whole Manhattan Project was very beneficial to our family.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the address of the home in Knoxville where your family lived?
MR. AURIN: Well, I don’t remember the street address but it was on Atlantic Avenue. That’s sort of near Fountain City area.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work any during those years?
MR. AURIN: No, my mother was strictly a homemaker. She, as far as I know she – well, she worked a little outside the home during our, during my growing up years but mainly she was one of the traditional women of those days. In fact, my mother never even learned to drive. My father took care of everything as far as that sort of thing. So she was really a homemaker.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What schools did you attend in Knoxville before you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: I attended a parochial school. It was the First Lutheran Parochial School. And what a contrast, Don. The school I went to was in the first and second grade. The school housed in one room the first through the sixth grade was all in one room. And I leave that setting to come to Oak Ridge to probably one of the best-operated school systems in the country. So what a change for me and for my siblings to be able to leave that type of educational setting all in one room, first to sixth grade, to a school system that was tops in the country, had new schools. I mean had everything we needed as far as supplies, probably the most up-to-date technology at the time, probably the most talented school teachers, and probably the most highly paid in maybe the South. So for me looking back on it what an opportunity for education we had and all that due to the Manhattan Project for us at least.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where the school was located in the Knoxville area?
MR. AURIN: Well, it's no longer there. It was the First Lutheran school/church. It was on the corner of Fifth and – do you know where the Knoxville mission is now, the Knoxville – I guess it's a mission. It's - well, it's right on Fifth Avenue and something…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Broadway.
MR. AURIN: Broadway – I guess you’re right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Broadway, right.
MR. AURIN: And now it's located further down Broadway. They still have a school. It's through the eighth grade I think now that they still have a school. They got them out of that one room I hope.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a lot of children in that one room you mentioned?
MR. AURIN: You know, my memory’s pretty vague. I actually thought it was years but no. I’d say I don’t remember the room being very large. I’d say there could have been forty or fifty kids in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So do you remember how the teacher taught first through sixth grade students?
MR. AURIN: No. I’ll tell you one thing I can remember. If you talked too much you had to go stand in the corner and you had to hold up this big ole dictionary for as long as you could hold it. I can remember that. I can remember the bad – the things I did bad, or all that. But as far as actually classroom instruction and all that, of course, if you talked too much you’re going to find out I was an average student. And I really wasn’t interested too much in what was going on in school. I was interested more in what was going on after school. But I really can’t recall much of that, how that was operated with one teacher. But they did it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to school?
MR. AURIN: I walked.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How far away was the house?
MR. AURIN: Next door…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very convenient.
MR. AURIN: In fact, that is part – my father had belonged to that church for – his father had. And my dad was actually in addition to doing what I told you, he was on the Knoxville Utility Board, he was the janitor for the school afterhours. We actually lived in the parsonage, and the minister did not live there at that time. We actually lived right there on the church grounds.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So your father heard about Oak Ridge or Manhattan Project and they’re hiring people, and what type of job did he come to Oak Ridge and apply for?
MR. AURIN: He was a chemical process operator at the Y-12 plant. And I assume he did that until after the war. And as you know we don’t know a lot about what he did do because he was one – he didn’t talk about his job. Like they were supposed to not talk about his job. But his title was chemical process operator. And he did that until the end of the war.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when he got the job in Oak Ridge did you still live in Knoxville or did you move to Oak Ridge later?
MR. AURIN: No. We were living in Knoxville. I don’t know exactly when my dad started work. I want to think it was early ’43 and probably I don’t think he was here in ’42 but it was probably early ’43 and we had to wait on housing. And we moved here in November of ‘43.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did he get back and forth from Knoxville to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: I think he rode a bus. In fact, I’m sure he had to bus because I know he didn’t have a car, so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know how he found out about employment in Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: I have no idea. Just back then I had no idea how he found out about it. But I’m sure word of mouth or whatever was going on at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of school clothes did you wear when you went to that school in Knoxville? Do you recall?
MR. AURIN: No, we didn’t have uniforms. I guess I just really don’t – Don, you’re going way back there on me, man. I don’t know. I’m assuming I wore whatever the day clothing was more than likely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when the family moved to Oak Ridge how many came total?
MR. AURIN: Total came – in fact, let me tell you about the bus ride over here. I can remember that. On the bus coming over to move to Oak Ridge was my mother and two sisters and myself. So there was four of us. And what made me think of this this morning, I don’t know if you read this morning’s Oak Ridger, but the Muddy Boot Award was awarded to three individuals apparently yesterday. And as you know that’s an award that recognizes individuals contributions to the city in various ways. And the Muddy Boot Award actually started – the idea was generated back in the Roane Anderson Economic Council. I can remember being involved, not in necessarily naming that but in that council. And then it's successor is E-Tech, which awarded this Muddy Boot. And it signifies back in the days, 30s, 40s, all the mud in Oak Ridge. Well, you asked me about coming over here. Well, my mom had bought us a pair of galoshes. Do you remember the term galoshes?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. AURIN: Well, they call them boots today I guess but I don’t know where the word came.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rubber overshoes…
MR. AURIN: Rubber overshoes – now where the name galoshes, I can’t even spell it, I don’t know where it came from. But anyway, we had them on. And I can still remember that bus pulling up in East Village. East Village used to have a shopping center that’s not as – it didn’t thrive like Grove Center is now but there’s still a store or something down there. But it's small in comparison. But anyway, that’s where the bus pulled in. and I remember stepping off the bus and the mud goes over the top of my galoshes. So I was thinking this morning that I was awarded a muddy boot when I was seven-years-old.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s go back to the galoshes a little bit. They were made out of rubber, and if I remember right they had these little metal snaps on the side. You put it through and pull them back over and they clamped against themselves. And they were about, what, four or five inches above the ankle or so.
MR. AURIN: Yeah or close to the knee for me at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So that mud had to be pretty deep to go across the top of your galoshes.
MR. AURIN: Well, I’m sure everybody that’s talked about Oak Ridge remembers the mud if they were here and the boardwalks. That’s the way we avoided the mud. And whoever came up with that idea, and I’m sure they did because they couldn’t lay a foundation in what it would take to put concrete down. I guess they had blacktop then or asphalt. But I wonder if anybody’s ever knows or it had to set some kind of world record for the number miles that we had of boardwalks in Oak Ridge. But that’s the way we avoided mud. If you remember…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, the boardwalks was miles and miles of wood inlaid. And you can imagine how long it took each boardwalk to be made. Later they were replaced with concrete and then of course the streets were asphalt.
MR. AURIN: They used to go back in the woods, remember that, there were trails, they would go everywhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was a real convenient way of getting to different places by taking shortcuts through the woods and…
MR. AURIN: I want to know, I’m assuming somewhere there’s an estimated number of miles that those things covered. But it was amazing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you said you got off the bus at the Grove, at the little shopping center there on Tennessee Avenue. Do you recall coming through the gate? What year would this be by the way?
MR. AURIN: Well, that’d be ’43.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall coming through maybe Elza Gate or Solway?
MR. AURIN: Just that I don’t remember that time but I definitely remember coming through the gates on many occasions.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We’ll talk about that a little later. I was just curious about the bus coming to that particular point and letting you off.
MR. AURIN: Do you remember I was about seven-years-old then I guess. So I don’t know what a seven-year-old remembers but I can’t remember it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, when you got off the bus what happened then?
MR. AURIN: Other than stepping in the mud…?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, after you decided to get your feet back up out of the mud.
MR. AURIN: You know I guess, I can’t remember, if we walked. We lived on – the first house we had was a flattop on Athens Road. Now Athens – that part of Athens Road has now been renamed Arkansas for some reason. So when I lived there it was on Athens and it just, oh, you just come. There’s a little dip. If you’re going – if you’re here at the site you just take the road. We just lived two city blocks from the main part of Elm Grove. And so probably walked to the house. I can’t remember. We probably just walked down to the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now maybe that was instead of Elm Grove, maybe that was West Village. Could that be…
MR. AURIN: No, no, we were in the east end of town now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, but I mean East Village.
MR. AURIN: I said Elm Grove. You said Elm Grove a while ago. You got me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: East Village.
MR. AURIN: East Village, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, when you said Athens and Arkansas that’s East Village.
MR. AURIN: That’s East Village.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you lived in a flattop. How many bedroom flattop was it?
MR. AURIN: That one was – I think that was a two bedroom flattop? It could have been a three. I know the house we next moved to was a three bedroom. More than likely that was a three bedroom with the size family we had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how the flattop was heated?
MR. AURIN: Oh yeah. I remember the stove in the center and you kept the doors open in the winter so you could get some heat. And I’ll tell one on my dad. When we moved from that location we moved from there over to West Austin Lane right behind Glenwood School. And I can remember the summer. Of course, water was free then, if you remember. My dad would put a sprinkler on top of the flattop and that kept it somewhat cool. It kept the sprinkler running on top of the roof and that kept some of the flattop cool.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He’s a pretty clever man.
MR. AURIN: Well, what – that was a coal-fired furnace.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Coal-fired – do you remember the old coal bins that they would drop the coal in. Where were they located?
MR. AURIN: These were located out on the street. If you had a flattop – the people that were in asbestos, they had those coal bins in the house, but those of us that lived in flattops at that time you had it out on the street.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever remember seeing a small escape door in the flattop that you could get out in case you couldn’t get out through the only door. They only had one door coming in.
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I have heard about some flattops that had an escape door.
MR. AURIN: Don, that’s a new one. Now if it had one surely as a kid I would have found it, but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, I lived in one too and I don’t remember it but apparently some did and some didn’t.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, no, I don’t remember having one. But West Austin Lane was probably – well, now see I started out in Elm Grove, school at Elm Grove. And for some reason during that year they moved some of us up to Cedar Hill. And I think it lasted two or three months and then they moved us back. I never knew why unless it was a crowding problem….
MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember one time they had a fire in the school.
MR. AURIN: In Elm Grove….
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. AURIN: Oh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And that’s probably the reason they moved you.
MR. AURIN: I don’t remember the fire but I remember going up there and having to come back. And then we moved over to a flattop on West Austin Lane right behind Glenwood School. In fact, West Austin Lane is no longer there because when the new school was built that property was needed. So those houses were taken down and the new school built.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you think it was a three bedroom flattop which would let your sisters have a bedroom and you by yourself with your parents.
MR. AURIN: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which makes sense…
MR. AURIN: Uh-huh
MR. HUNNICUTT: The first day you went to Elm Grove School, what do you remember about going to school?
MR. AURIN: Don, you know, I’ll be honest with you. I do not remember – I can remember most everything at Glenwood, but for some reason Elm Grove is somewhat foggy for me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’d be the third grade you attended.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. but I can remember being with much more kids than I was used to being with, and I don’t know if I really remember this but surely I recognize that difference in supplies, equipment, just everything that the Oak Ridge school system had compared to where I had started school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You probably had more kids in one – in your homeroom than you had in the whole school you attended in Knoxville.
MR. AURIN: That’s true.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any of your teachers’ names?
MR. AURIN: I don’t know if Miss Blanchard was at – that’s the first name I can remember in a teacher in elementary school. And she may have been our third grade teacher but I just can’t remember exactly her – what my teachers in Elm Grove’s names were.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what grades did you attend at Elm Grove?
MR. AURIN: Third grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just third only…
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then you attended Glenwood?
MR. AURIN: Then we moved to West Austin Lane and I guess that precipitated the move to then to Glenwood School, I mean officially then. So I went to the fourth through the sixth grade at Glenwood. The thing I guess I remember, like I said, I was an average student and I was still more interested in what was outside than inside the school. But the thing I can remember most about that period of my life, the fourth through sixth grade, is the summers. In Oak Ridge each playground, we called them playgrounds – the playgrounds were attached to the schools, like Glenwood, Pine Valley, Cedar Hill, Linden, those schools – each one of them in the summer had a full time playground director and an assistant director. And it was open I think from about nine to four or five. And this is summer. And I know my mother just loved living in Oak Ridge because here we would go and I would spend more time than my sisters. At nine o’clock in the morning I’d leave, come home for lunch. I’d leave and be home about five o’clock. What went on at those it's just unreal what we had at those playgrounds, every piece of equipment you could think of to play football, softball, we had track. We had all kind of arts and crafts. And we had organized leagues. We would play in touch football or softball. We would leave – we would play Linden playground or the Pine Valley or the Cedar Hill depending on what the schedule said. Well, when we had the games at Linden, which was on the far west end of town, at that time Linden was up on LaSalle Road, the old Linden site. We’d all get on a bus and then it was free, and we’d have transfers. You’d have to transfer two or three times to get to Linden. But we’d show up at Linden, play our ballgame, do the same thing and come home. It was unreal. I mean we’d have marble tournaments, we had – remember marbles. They probably don’t even know what those are nowadays I don’t think. But we’d have those tournaments. The winner of your playground would get to go to the city. And by the way, I got to go to the city because I won ours at the Glenwood. But those were some years, I’ll tell you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s talk about the marble tournament. Tell me how you played marbles.
MR. AURIN: Well, marbles is you draw just a circle in the dirt and you put some marbles in the center and then each of you, how many – I don’t know if there was a rule on how many of them there can be. There can be just one-on-one or maybe three or four. You remember, you played them. And don’t you remember the taw, that was what you used to hit the marbles with. And if you really knew somebody or you had enough marbles to trade we bartered those things if you remember. You remember the steely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. AURIN: The steely was, I guess, a ball bearing probably from the plants. I guess that’s where they came from. But didn’t they cost you twenty of your glass marbles just to get one steely. So you had to win a bunch of marbles to be able to own a steely if you remember. But kids wouldn’t even know what marbles are nowadays.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Sort of like playing cards, you ante up and so many marbles were put in by each player if I remember right. So you shot outside the circle and as long as you knocked a marble out you kept shooting. Is that the way it was?
MR. AURIN: Yeah and the more you – if you – if I got more marbles out than you did I won.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember that everybody wanted a real cherry marble, a real red looking marble.
MR. AURIN: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the one generally you used as your shooter and you didn’t want to lose that one.
MR. AURIN: That’s right. But so those were some, I guess, I remember those years was I guess fondly that – like I said it was so well organized and free. I mean that just came with living here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of classes do you remember when you were going to Glenwood that they had?
MR. AURIN: Well, I can remember I guess – I can remember English. I can remember some History. I can remember – I guess I remember more about the fifth grade. In fact, I used to sit next to Glen Greer, Dr. Greer in town, the dentist, Glen Greer. And he was a student, he was a good student. But I’d say I can remember Writing. We had Writing classes, Spelling. I guess the normal Reading, Writing, Arithmetic.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about Music and Art?
MR. AURIN: I did not participate in Music and there’s no way I could participate in Art other than what was just given. I mean that. I didn’t elect to do any music and, boy, do you look back now and wish you did. The days I spent playing softball and football and doing the track and all those things. I wish I would have been putting a little time on the piano or the saxophone or like my grandson who plays a saxophone, his first year of saxophone, and a guitar. And here I don’t know the first note of music.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, boys do what boys do in those days.
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the safety patrol in school?
MR. AURIN: Oh, I got to be one. I guess you did too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell me about your experience with the safety patrol.
MR. AURIN: Okay. The safety patrol, the best I can remember the thing you liked most was being – was getting to put that white belt on and being recognized as a safety patrol. I mean that was a step above that you had achieved something or something I guess, or at least that’s the feeling, the best I remember. And we got to help with getting kids on and off the school bus. I don’t remember all the functions we were in but it was a big deal to be a safety patrol.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You kind of had an authority over the other kids.
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Except if they got out of line you could get them back in line.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. And maybe I liked that because I was so small. Did I show you – I think I mentioned this badge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, we’ll get to that in just a minute, yeah.
MR. AURIN: But on the back of it it says how big you are. This was at twelve-years-old. And so I was a pretty small child, kid, growing up I mean until I got out of high school is when I got my height but I was a pretty small child. But anyway, you’re such an authority figure I don’t know if I – I don’t know if I used that but I’m sure it was there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a bicycle in those days?
MR. AURIN: Yes. Well, we got a bicycle one Christmas I remember when we lived on, there on West Austin, so yeah. we had bicycles and, man, was that a form of transportation. I mean you rode those everywhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother – was she very strict on you and your sisters during those days?
MR. AURIN: Well, like I said, if my mom was here now I think she would probably agree with us. She had it made as far as in the summers at least because we were out of her hair, man. We were on the playground. But one rule we had, and as you’ll recall, we played every kind of game at night and in the summer that you could play; fox and hound, Kick the Can, all that stuff. But our rule was, and I guess a lot of families had this rule, when those street lights came on we were supposed to be home. So generally – and we got permission occasionally to play Fox and Hound at night. That meant after the street lights were out. And you remember what that game was. You take some chalk and a group of you go out ahead of time and you mark on the street where you’ve been with X’s and then hounds come after you and try to find you and you try to stay ahead of them. But anyway, we got permission to play that after dark on occasion.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about how you played Kick the Can.
MR. AURIN: Golly! I don’t know if I remember the rules. It was sort of – wasn’t it sort of like softball or a game where you…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you had a can…
MR. AURIN: Well, I know you kick a can. That’s for sure. We kicked the can, but you know I’m trying to think of exactly how the game went.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think that someone had to be it and they stayed around the can. And everybody else went out and sort of hid. And then this person…
MR. AURIN: And then they’d try to sneak by to get you…
MR. HUNNICUTT: …would go out and you’d try to sneak by that person who was it, and you kicked the can.
MR. AURIN: Thanks for bringing me back.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think that’s the way it was.
MR. AURIN: I think you got it. You’ve hit the can on the head.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Well, let’s back up a little bit. Do you remember how your mother washed clothes for you kids in those days?
MR. AURIN: Well, I can remember the old washer ringer. In other words, you got to wash it on the agitator type thing and then she had to take them out of that and there was a hand rolled ringer that you usually, that I think was on top of this tub. And she rung those through, ran those through this ringer, and then out they went on the clothesline.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the ladies in the neighborhood at the clotheslines talking to each other about local gossip and things of that nature?
MR. AURIN: No, Don, I don’t. They might have done it and I probably wasn’t paying any attention but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember about the neighborhoods, your buddies and pals?
MR. AURIN: Oh yeah. Well, that’s a – growing up on West Austin Lane I was thinking this morning, I was working down there for some thoughts. And that was probably, like I said, the best years of my young life because on that street were the Mitchell’s. They had three or four boys, Billy Mitchell, Freddy Mitchell, Bobby Mitchell. You might of known some of those boys.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I know who Bobby Mitchell is.
MR. AURIN: He was a pretty good football player. And Lavoy Killian, do you know Lavoy?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, I do.
MR. AURIN: Lavoy and I – I used to talk to Lavoy like you and I are talking right now and I still see him. He works out at Centennial, cuts out there. And he and I still talk but oh, I have so much more difficulty. I used to play – I played with him every day. I could talk to him just like you and I are talking. And Lavoy was quite – I mean when you look back at the years he grew up with his handicap was able to play on that playground with all of us, he was fast. I don’t know what he did when he went to – he went over to TSD. And I think he was on their track team.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was.
MR. AURIN: But, I mean, he and I would race and he’d beat me every time. I was fairly fast but, man, Lavoy could beat me hands down in a race. And we had had a bunch of them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I saw him at the high school at a track meet one time. And that’s when they had the hundred-yard dash and he won it and he was like a rabbit. He was gone.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. Well, he and I played together on that same playground and that was – that’s another experience when you look back on it being able to grow up a person with that particular handicap and yet it didn’t even seem like a handicap.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think that the people that was here in the early days they all blended together and got along with each other?
MR. AURIN: The ones that we were associated with definitely did. I don’t remember any real friction of even my playmates or even families that we were associated with. I really think it's the times were different. I just think – well, families were different and you probably heard people say this. I think that’s a problem with the whole country or world today now. The family unit is not what it used to be. All these families that lived on West Austin Lane knew each other. We were out in the yard. We were all – they were conversing. Today kids aren’t out in the yard. People don’t even know who lives next door to them. So I just think to say it simply I think all the families on West Austin Lane were a family in a way because the kids intermingled, they were in the house, out in each other’s houses. So we were really just one big family.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your mother did her grocery shopping?
MR. AURIN: Hmm…Now there was a store that in the early years it was just a – they called it a commissary, sort of like a commissary, there in East Village. And I can remember them standing in line especially when certain products came in, tobacco products, meat; the lines would be backed up a mile probably trying to get in line to get some of those particular items. So yeah, there was a grocery store right there in the East Village the best I remember. I think they called it a commissary or something like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Show me your badge and tell me about the history by that badge you have on.
MR. AURIN: Okay, well I wore this today to show you…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Take it off, and let us see it.
MR. AURIN: Let me see if I can get that off. This is a badge that when you became twelve-years-old you were required to wear a badge to get in and out of the city. And it has your picture on it and it has a number here. This sticker number says resident 33735. Now I don’t know where they – whether that is of any significance as far as number, actual number. Then on the back it's typed in, Ralph E. Aurin, Jr. And then I signed it Ralph E. Aurin. It doesn’t look like I put a junior on it unless that’s what that clamp is back there. But I was four foot eleven inches, sixty-nine pounds. Now this is when I was seven-years old, twelve years old, brown hair, brown eyes. And date issued, 05/12/48, May the 12th.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you show that to the camera, turn that around?
MR. AURIN: The backside…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, the backside…
MR. AURIN: And so I was twelve in February, February the 15th. So this was done in May. So somewhere after your twelve-years old you were required to have this particular badge. It sort of looks like you’re in – it's got the height and the lineup. But anyway, that’s…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where you went to get the badge, where you had to go?
MR. AURIN: No, I haven’t the foggiest idea how I got it. But I’ve kept it, you know, over the years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you had to wear that badge if you left the city and you came back in but other than that you didn’t have to wear it on an everyday basis?
MR. AURIN: No, we didn’t have to wear it daily the best I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s talk a little bit about leaving the city since you mentioned that. Now what do you remember about going through the gates and coming back?
MR. AURIN: Well, I just remember the uniformed guards and they had weapons the best I remember. And most of the time we left the city it was on a bus because like I said we didn’t own a car. But I have been – I was on occasion in cars and they would – I can remember they’d open the truck. A lot of times they’d have you get out of the car. They’d look under the Cts. To be honest with you I think they was looking for alcohol more than they were looking for anything else because as you know we were a dry county. And I think the challenge for the adults that year as to see I they could get the alcohol through the gate. I think that was the challenge. But for me remembering – I just remember having to get out of the car and then raising the trunk and doing that. On the buses all they did is I think – I don’t even know if they ever – they may have boarded a bus and looked through it. I just can’t recall. I recall more about the car than the bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was some of the places you went when you left the city?
MR. AURIN: The only place that I can remember we ever went was Knoxville. I mean that was about the only place that we ever went that I can recall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the route that you took to go to Knoxville in those days?
MR. AURIN: One at the old Solway Highway, I mean the old Oak Ridge Highway. I believe that was the way we actually got to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Across Solway Bridge and…
MR. AURIN: Yeah, across Solway Bridge and then going up left back then it wasn’t Big Foot. Big Foot’s up on the right. But I think that was…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Down through Karns…
MR. AURIN: Karns – I think that was the path the best I remember that we took to get to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After you left Glenwood, you went to the junior high. Where was the junior high located when you attended it?
MR. AURIN: The junior high was where Robertsville Middle School is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And the name of it was…
MR. AURIN: Jefferson Junior High School – it's an identical location of where the Robertsville Middle School is now. And I guess we were living on – I guess Chatham Lane. We moved from West Austin Lane to our first cemesto. It was a C house on Chatham Lane and that was – talk about a step up to get to go into a cemesto. And that’s the years I guess I lived on Chatham Lane while I was at junior high school. And from there we moved to our final destination, I guess, was on Decatur Road, another C house on Decatur off Delaware. And I spent my high school years there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what a C house looks like.
MR. AURIN: Okay, a C house was a three-bedroom house that had – oh, there was a bedroom wing that had the three bedrooms and a bath. And then you had a fairly large dining room/living room combination. And the kitchen was off of that, and a utility room. That’s where the furnace and the old – and the stove, and the coal bin was back there. Now all that’s been remodeled but the original C house that’s the way it was. And now that you brought it up I just thought, talk about a challenge for my father. Here we are in a C house, three girls. Now we’re of an age that they have to primp on account of – we were – my sister was two years ahead of me in high school. So say she was a senior, I was a sophomore, then we had Linda and Nancy below that. To go to church on Sunday morning with four women in the house and me and my dad to get ready for Sunday School, I mean get ready to go to Sunday School and church, I think he had to get up 5:00 in the morning and get out of there because he had four women trying to get ready, or four girls, one woman and three girls trying to get ready to go to church. So it's amazing how we made it with one bathroom compared to what kids have today. Every kid has their own bathroom about today. But quite a – but the C house was a big step up from the flattop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And how did you get to Jefferson down on Robertsville when you went to school?
MR. AURIN: School bus is the only thing I can tell you. I mean I know I didn’t ride a bicycle to school, I mean to that school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there certain places that you stood to wait on the school bus or any bus?
MR. AURIN: Oh yeah, each school bus had a school bus stop you’d say and the kids would gather. The kids would gather there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you got on the bus and rode to and from your home to Robertsville and back. Do you remember when you were going to Robertsville what kind of classes you took different there than you were – that you took in Glenwood?
MR. AURIN: Well, to me it seemed like it was more – of course, we had the homerooms the best I remember. Was that in junior high school?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You did have homerooms in both situations.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, and then but it seemed like what was different is we went to different areas of the school for a particular class like Science, George Plumlee or whoever it was. Do you remember Mr. Plumlee?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. AURIN: He always told jokes, old Mr. Plumlee, but – and I can remember Miss Neff was my eighth grade teacher. But to answer your question, yeah, we went to Music. If you had Music you went to a different area where it was a little different than in the other schools.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about sports? Did you participate in sports in junior high?
MR. AURIN: Probably the biggest disappointment in my life to be honest with you Don was because I was a fairly good athlete or at least I was coordinated and I could just about keep up with Lavoy speed-wise, not quite, but just about. But I was so little that I could play sports, the playground sports that we played. So here I go out in the seventh grade for football. That was my dream to be able to play football. Well, I make it until we have the physical. And I can remember Coach Orlando coming up to me, or was it Stuhmiller – one of the two – and after that, after they probably looked at the weight charts. And as I told you what I weighed – I said I weighed – when I was twelve I weight sixty-nine pounds. So most of that – that’s close to the age of junior high school. So anyway, he comes up to me after the physical and he says, “Ralph, how would you like to be manager?” And I went home crying. So I was not – I didn’t have the size to play other than intramural sports in high school, junior high school and high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Coach Orlando was quite a unique individual, wasn’t he?
MR. AURIN: Really, I mean everybody would tell you about the coach. In fact, as you know, to this day at the high school before the football game starts you’ll hear them say, “Coach Orlando please report to the press box.” Yeah, they’d say that before every game. You could – he was really an amazing – he wasn’t a motivator but an amazing guy. He couldn’t make it in today’s system, I mean on account of the way he would – you could be going up for a krypton and all of a sudden you had a paddle in the rear end that could take your breath away. And you remember his paddle. And I can imagine that going on today but he had the respect of his kids. And the other thing I can remember about Coach, and I didn’t like him for this, he made us – and I don’t know if they did it when you were in school. I think it was seventh grade. You had to enter the boxing ring and box two rounds, I think. And I dreaded that day that I had to get in that ring. But everybody had to go through that. I don’t know what he was trying to teach but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: We interviewed a lady some time ago that she actually got in the ring and fought with a boy one time.
MR. AURIN: Oh really?
MR. HUNNICUTT: He got her to do that. I don’t remember who she was but quite unique.
MR. AURIN: You know who I think – and it’ll relate back to this, come to think of it, back to this group here. He’s not here to confirm this but I actually think my challenger was Bill Clary, Marge’s son, who is now, his son is the announcer for the Oak Ridge [Inaudible]. So it was his father that I had entered the ring with in the seventh grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, there was certainly a unique Physical Education program for kids in those days at the schools.
MR. AURIN: Oh, yeah. I don’t see – I mean we all were – we all must have been in pretty good shape.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have a paper route?
MR. AURIN: Yes, in fact, I thrived on that. I actually carried at one time I carried the journal I the morning and the Oak Ridger in the afternoon. So I had two paper routes at one time. I did also carry the [Knoxville News] Sentinel at one time. But I guess I did that – I can’t remember the first year I started, probably in junior high school and I did it up through, maybe up through a part of high school and learned so much, Don, about people then. I mean that did – back then you had – was telling Tom Hill this the other day, the ex-owner of the publisher in Oak Ridge. That was really a learning experience for kids. I learned more about people especially collecting. I mean you had to go out and collect your money. And I can remember one family actually, I’m going to use the word, beat me out of a week’s pay. They said they’d already paid me. Well, I did not keep books I mean like you’re supposed to have. But, boy, what your memory could do back then. You could remember about everything you did then. But that was a – that was really a unique learning experience, having a paper route. I think it was one of the better things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think some of the customers just did it for spite just to see if they could get away with it. I had the same experience.
MR. AURIN: Did you?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. AURIN: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: One in particular, a lady said, “Come back next week. You come back next week, I paid you last week.” Finally, I just quit giving her the newspaper because I had to pay for it. But what about Coke bottles? Did you gather Coke bottles and sell Coke bottles?
MR. AURIN: Oh, yeah. Don’t you remember the games we used to play with the bottom of them where they – depending on where they were bottled.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Far Away…
MR. AURIN: Far Away – they played Far Away and you got yours free or you had to buy mine. Okay, if you want to talk about Coke bottles for just a second, Jim McMahan sold his drug store up on the corner, Jackson Square Pharmacy. Well, his father collected Coke bottles. And back in the basement of the store were those Coke bottles. And when Jim sold out, sold the store, and Dean’s Restaurant is in there now. If you’ll go in there Dean has as his salt and pepper shakes the Coke bottles that Dr. McMahan, Jim’s father, had collected. They’re up there now, so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember you would play Far Away and the way you could tell a bottle that was further than the other was how much it was skinned up on the outside. That was the way we detected – generally what was the farthest away.
MR. AURIN: Oh, now the way we played it, it was on the very bottom of them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, I mean the name was on the bottom but you could figure it had been around a long time, it traveled a long distance, I guess because it was skinned up on the outside.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, it had a little more travel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about – did you ever collect lightning bugs and sell lightning bugs for money?
MR. AURIN: Oh, yeah, didn’t we all? Yeah, our whole – I guess all of my whole family. That was a challenge to see how many we could get.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what did you do with them after you collected them before you took to be sold? Where’d you keep them?
MR. AURIN: The best I remember we kept them – is this the way? I don’t know if they had instructions on how to keep or not. But the only thing I could remember doing is keeping them in a mason jar with holes in the top for ventilation or air. Maybe later days after they got improved they might have given us something, given the kids something to keep them in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, that was the way it was. We put them in the refrigerator to…
MR. AURIN: Yeah, keep them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the home delivery of milkmen delivering milk to the house?
MR. AURIN: Sure do. In fact, I’m sure – back to West Austin Lane, we’d be out playing stick ball or whatever we were playing, Kick the Can or whatever it might be, and when the milk man came by and he was so kind, we couldn’t wait to get a piece of ice because that’s the way he kept his milk cold. He would give us a piece of ice. And that was really a treat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember about how much money you would make selling newspapers when you had a paper route?
MR. AURIN: What did we earn, Don? Let’s see. Ten cents come to mind and a quarter comes to mind but I don’t know how or what percent. Did we get a quarter a week?
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t remember…
MR. AURIN: A dime a week…
MR. HUNNICUTT: It wasn’t much.
MR. AURIN: Per customer…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two dollars was a whole lot of money in those days.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. Maybe it was a dime per customer per week that we collected or something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Assuming they paid us.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. We had a bill. We had to pay the bill whatever the bill was then it's up to us to make the difference. I mean we had – don’t you remember?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. AURIN: And I guess that taught us something back then that you had a bill to pay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It taught us that everybody wasn’t honest.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, right, it did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you left Jefferson and you went to the high school where was the high school located?
MR. AURIN: It's located where it is now. I don’t remember what year they came off the hill and went to where it's located now but that’s another unique thing for me. Again, coming out of, like I said, a parochial school, one room, to a brand new school at Elm Grove. Well, I got the privilege of just about going to a brand new high school then because it was built in ’52 and I graduated in ’54. So it was only two-years-old when I graduated.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There’s quite a difference from going to Jefferson and then going to the high school. What’d you see the big difference was?
MR. AURIN: Of course, you know, back then junior highs went through the ninth grade. And then ten, eleven, twelve went to high school. Again, I think the big thing was there was more intimidation factor I think there. I mean you didn’t mind going from that because you were going to the big high school, the older kids and all this. But again, the more structured or separate learning centers, I think, compared to being all in just one room. We still had homerooms but it seemed like that’s…
MR. HUNNICUTT: You got an opportunity to choose your classes.
MR. AURIN: Right, right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of classes did you take?
MR. AURIN: I didn’t take enough Math I know that for the major I went into in college. But I can remember core, selecting. I selected, I think you could select whether to take English or core or I think it was called core or at least senior English or something. If you thought you were going on to college you took the higher or the different English class, which I took. But I sure didn’t take enough Math. I didn’t go far. I didn’t get enough Math in my curriculum for when I got to college. I think I was very well prepared when I went to college in English, Literature, History area. But, boy, Math I had not gone far enough. I struggled with Math in college. But I think I was well – I could have been well prepared. But you’ll still talk about Oak Ridge students leaving Oak Ridge and going to college, they’ll tell you they’re much more prepared than their peers that first year especially, than most of their peers through other systems. So Oak Ridge is still got a very good school system that prepares their students.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Ralph, do you remember some of your teachers in high school?
MR. AURIN: Oh goodness. I remember – well, at first a few of the administrators. Do you remember Ms. Barnes. She was in Guidance. And Mama – I don’t think we called it to her face but we called her Mama Barnes. And let’s see, Mazel Turner, Ruth Benson – now I better not say what we called her behind her back. Let’s see. then in the – still in administration was Harold Banger. We called him “Five Fingers” the best I remember. Did you call him that or…
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’m not going to admit to any of that. But I remember these people, yes.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, and Ms. Cebrat in the…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was she the librarian?
MR. AURIN: The library, in the library, and Harold Dunnigan was the principal, one of the principals at the time. Of course, Don Bordinger was there and Jack Armstrong the coach. I’m trying to think who my homeroom teacher was. Maybe it was Mazel Turner, I guess, maybe it was. But Ms. Wayne was my Spanish teacher and I was probably one of her poorest students. But one of the things I can remember she said, and I remember this all my life is that – and I don’t think she was talking to me directly at this time, but I remember her making this comment. She said an intelligent person doesn’t know everything but knows where to find it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very true.
MR. AURIN: And I remember that all along. So I’ve had to remember where to find it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like school, high school?
MR. AURIN: Yes, I liked high school. I was not as involved as my peers. In other words, I kind of ran with Ben Greer, the president of our student body. But I was never inclined I guess to actually take on a role of like a class officer or something like that, that I was a pretty quiet kid apparently back in those days. Yet I feel like I had a good experience in high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about dating in high school? Did you do a lot of that?
MR. AURIN: No, not a whole lot. I did not do a lot of dating, some, but never did have a steady back then, a steady girlfriend in high school, but so you might ask how did I stay occupied. But I did a lot. We did – the thing I can remember in high school, too, is all the dances we’d have. And I loved to dance. And there was a place out near Gamble Valley that the – or Scarboro, that I think the Sartoma Club or something had a place out there. And on the weekend, on Friday nights we’d go out there. It was for high school kids. And they’d have music and we’d dance. And later I married Belinda Baker who graduated in ’57. So she was behind me but they started actually dancing outside in the cafeteria during lunch breaks at school. And when she – after I left high school – I left in ’54 so I started after that. so dancing was a big thing back then. Of course, the 50s music was made for dancing…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rock and roll music…
MR. AURIN: …was made for dancing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the Wildcat Den, did you…
MR. AURIN: Yeah, I didn’t frequent the Wildcat Den. I wasn’t a regular. But I did go a lot. And we was talking about Coach Orlando. Nobody’s going to ever surpass Shep Lauder either. I mean he’s a legend in my mind for his years of shepherding us as youth especially at the Wildcat Den. And he had some problems to deal with. I mean kids have problems today. We didn’t have half the problems then. I guess what’d we have to worry about, tobacco and alcohol, I guess was the only thing that probably had to worry about those days. Just think what Shep Lauder would have to work with today.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, he was like a father figure for all the kids and especially the boys if I remember right.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, he sure was and he tried to keep them straight, those that were a little on the wayward side. He would do his best to keep them in line.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about in the summer time, did you frequent the swimming pool by the high school?
MR. AURIN: Yep. Yeah, as – I think I mentioned to you earlier, a good friend of mine, Mike Mal has written an article about what he calls Camelot. And he says that when somebody asks him where he grew up he says Camelot. And then they say where is that? and he says – then he tells them about Oak Ridge. But in that little narrative that I think I gave you that he wrote he even mentions it, and I can remember exactly what, the way he says it. In there he’s talking, he says, do you remember the day you had the courage to go of the high diving board at the Oak Ridge swimming pool? And the way he says it – I can remember that day – the courage it took to take that leap off of that high diving board because it seemed to back then, it seemed like it was a mile high.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was. Did you have any summer jobs during the high school days?
MR. AURIN: Yes, I worked about – worked from my freshman year – well, it’d be sophomore year I guess because tenth grade – through my senior year and my first year of college at Elm Grove Drug Store. It's no longer here but of course Elm Grove itself school is no longer. But right across the street was another shopping area called Elm Grove. And there was a drug store there and Mr. McGinley who lived in Clinton ran it along with Dr. Greer. They were the two pharmacists. And I worked every Wednesday and every Saturday and Sunday through high school. So my weekends were – I’d work Saturday all day and Sunday we didn’t open up till about 1:00 and I’d work from about 1:00 to 5:00 or 6:00 on Sunday. But I worked every Saturday and Sunday and Wednesday evenings/afternoons, after school Wednesday until 9:00 or whatever it was at Elm Grove Drugstore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your job duties?
MR. AURIN: I was the soda jerk and was responsible for oiling the floor. And back then they had the wood floors but they didn’t – they weren’t varnished. You’d actually put a coat – take a mop and take a coat of some kind of oil occasionally and oil them down. And I was responsible for that. Back to memories, like you and I talked about, we had our paper routes and we’d remember Mr. Smith didn’t pay last week. Well, I could take orders for six people sitting around a booth without writing it down. I could remember. I mean that’s just the way your mind was then. So I’d say this is the best store I got – I guess from Mr. McGinley. As a soda jerk of course you made milkshakes and sundaes and sandwiches. Well, when a friend – say you were my friend and you happened to stop by after school for a milkshake, well, let’s say I put you an extra scoop of ice cream in there. Well, you put that up in the blender for some reason it goes err, err, instead of whirring. Well, here would be Mr. McGinley behind the prescription. He would be leaning over there looking at me. You could hear that thing. It's supposed to be whirring. It wasn’t supposed to be chugging down. So he knew when I was putting a little extra ice cream in there for my friend Don that came in for a milkshake. But again, a great learning experience about people, just a great learning experience on how to deal with people in that setting of just being a soda jerk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he ever say anything to you about doing that?
MR. AURIN: No, his eyes told me. I think his eyes just kind of told me that I had stepped over the line a little.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much was the milkshake in those days?
MR. AURIN: You know I can remember you could get a half a gallon of ice cream for fifty cents. So that’s a fair amount of ice cream. So a quarter. I’d say at the most a quarter. I think you get a cherry Coke or a vanilla Coke. Don’t you remember those, cherry Cokes, vanilla Cokes? You’d get those for a nickel. And a scoop of ice cream for a nickel. And I’d say a quarter for probably is what a milkshake cost back then I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That drugstore operated for many years.
MR. AURIN: Sure did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I used to live next to that drugstore and we’d go over there. It was quite a treat to go to a drugstore with a fountain.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, it's - that’s fond memories. You’re bringing back some good old times.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After you graduated from high school, where’d you attend college?
MR. AURIN: I went to Tennessee Tech in…
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what was your major?
MR. AURIN: My major was Industrial Management. They’ve changed that now. I think they call it Industrial Technology or something. It's a mixture of Business and Engineering courses. And I thought I would be in a – at those years. I got out in ’58. I’d thought I’d go into some industrial setting for a job but we’ll talk about that in a minute, the job I ended up in. But, Don, I guess the big thing I guess I noticed by going to Cookeville was another eye opener in my life is I’d lived – I’d grown up in a pretty controlled setting. My younger years in a fenced city, still even in ’54 when I graduated Oak Ridge was still somewhat, I’d say, isolated. I don’t know how you felt but I never kind of thought much outside of Oak Ridge. In other words I just seemed like my world was the city, the boundaries of the city of Oak Ridge. So I get down to Cookeville and it's an older city. We grew up with very little crime, very little unemployment. I think the first traffic accident in Oak Ridge was in 1949. So we really grew up in still a pretty protected life. And here I get down into Cookeville it's a county Ct and there’s a courthouse and there’s people whittling around there. And there’s different socioeconomic – back in the 50s we had a pretty – I’ve always described Oak Ridge in the early years, we didn’t have social levels. We had educational levels. And so we had some fairly sophisticated people educationally. So when you go to a small – I mean my first experience – to a more rural area like Cookeville in those days, it's not as rural now as it was then, but go around the courthouse or just – it's just a different socioeconomic groups. And it opened my eyes to all that. But back to what I said about I wish I had taken more Math because I got down there and had to take college Algebra and Physics and some of these courses I just wasn’t prepared for. Now English I did, I zipped through that. we had guys – it was mainly an Engineering school then. It still is a pretty strong Engineering school. And we had some Engineering students that had zipped through all those Engineering courses and were still trying to get their freshman English before they graduated. But I was just the opposite. I didn’t have any trouble with English. I had the trouble with the Math side.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you stay in Cookeville all the time or did you come home occasionally?
MR. AURIN: I guess Cookeville is a suitcase college then and it may still be. I don’t know. A lot of kids went home on the weekends. I didn’t have any transportation. Occasionally I could find a kid from Oak Ridge that had a car to ride. But we did quite a bit of actually thumbing home. I don’t know. A lot of occasions I would thumb from Clinton – I mean start out Friday night, Friday afternoon thumbing to Oak Ridge and get back…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you’re going to have to tell the viewing audience that would look at this video what thumbing is.
MR. AURIN: Okay, thumbing is where you actually get out on the street and put your thumb out, and back in those days that meant you needed a ride. You didn’t have the signs that the homeless or the people say now. “I need to get Atlanta or need – I’m headed this way or that way.” All you did was stick your thumb out and in those days really it wasn’t difficult to get a ride because there wasn’t a high crime rate. People weren’t worried about it. Today, there’s no way you can pick anybody up even if you want to because you don’t know what you’re picking up. The only experience I can remember, Don, is that – I mean not the only – an experience I can remember thumbing is I ended up getting in with a drunk. And we started out at Cookeville and thank goodness we get to – he knew I was going to Oak Ridge. I already told him I was going to Oak Ridge. He was headed to Knoxville. We get to Crossville and I said, whatever his name was, I said, “Bill, I just remember I’ve got an Aunt here that I’ve got – I’ve just got to see.” And so I got out at Crossville and started thumbing again to get in. But anyway, thumbing’s getting a ride and you don’t do it today.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you graduated from Cookeville, TTI I believe they called it those days, did you come back to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: Well, I first went in the service for just a short stint. They had a program, a six-month activity duty and then five and a half reserves. So I went – I think I went in in August and then got out six months later. And I did return to Oak Ridge to Decatur Road where my parents were. And starting to think about looking for a job. Well, our next-door neighbor, JC Bart, unknown to me at the time was a stockholder in the Bank of Oak Ridge. And he knew I was looking for a job. And so he, unknown to me, he mentioned my name to Harry Delozier who was manager of the Bank of Oak Ridge at that time. And so I get a call from Mr. Delozier saying, “I understand you’re looking for a job. Would you be interested in coming down and having an interview for a position we have?” I said, “Well, I ain’t got anything else.” And I’m sure going down there. So I went down and interviewed with Mr. Delozier. I called him Harry because I got to know him better after that, but Mr. Delozier. Actually the President of the bank at the time was Tommy Klein. Now he was manager of Loveman’s Department Store. They had store around Chattanooga but he was the manager of the Oak Ridge store and one of the founders of the Bank of Oak Ridge. And back then a president of the bank was more of a title and a lot of times just members of the board might hold that title. They weren’t actual bankers but they were still president of the bank. So he was president of the bank but Mr. Delozier managed the bank. So I went down and interviewed with them. They offered me the job; two hundred and ninety dollars a month. And I thought, well, that’s two hundred and ninety dollars a month more than I’m making right now. And I actually thought, Don, that I would – in my mind I said, “Well, this’ll get me started. I’m still going to start looking for a job.” Well, forty years went by and I stayed in the banking business. So I stayed in the banking business for forty years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your job when you first went to the bank?
MR. AURIN: First went to the bank – well, back then even though I had a college degree they didn’t have – banks now have training programs, management training programs. Of course, back then they probably – they hadn’t even heard of management training programs. I actually started out as a teller. I was a teller for a year, just a regular teller across the window.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Bank of Oak Ridge first – where did it originate?
MR. AURIN: Okay, it originated – the first location was up in Jackson Square at what’s called the Old Town Hall building.
MR. HUNNICUTT: On Kentucky Avenue…
MR. AURIN: On Kentucky Avenue – in fact, the portion they occupied was – well, back then Management Services, you remember that name, did everything at Oak Ridge, they actually bid on a place that was up for bid to rent. You had to bid through MSI as I understand it, and it was actually where Western Union used to be in that particular location prior to the Bank of Oak Ridge. And I’ll tell you in a minute a little more about that location but the Bank of Oak Ridge actually – there was a group of twenty-two individuals that started discussing a bank for Oak Ridge in early to mid ’52. It became public in January of ’53, the front-page of the Oak Ridger, that there was plans for a new bank in Oak Ridge called the Bank of Oak Ridge. And Tom Lane, who was then head of Industrial Relations for Union Carbide was one of the originators of the Bank of Oak Ridge. And he was the temporary chairman. And he’s the one that made the announcement that this group of twenty-two had signed an application for a charter for the Bank of Oak Ridge in Oak Ridge. So that was announced in January of ’53. And I think what I’d like to do, if you don’t mind, I’d like to read to you the names of those twenty-two individuals that had the foresight or the thought that there was a need for a bank in Oak Ridge, a full service bank. In a minute I’ll talk a little about Hamilton.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me ask you a question before you do that. and it’ll be a pleasure for you to do that. The only bank I remember was the Hamilton Bank in the square in the back of where you’re describing. If I remember right that was the only bank the city had. Is that correct?
MR. AURIN: Correct! And here was the stipulation that – the way that came about, Hamilton National Bank of Knoxville was asked by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1943 to provide banking services to Oak Ridge. Now the reason for that is that the banking laws back in that time in ’43 you could not branch outside your county, okay. The government saw the need with seventy some thousand people here. The government saw the need that they needed some kind of banking services here. So the U.S. Treasury Department gave the Hamilton Bank of Knoxville permission to open two, what they call facilities. They didn’t call them banks. They called them facilities in Oak Ridge. Technically they were limited to depository services. In other words they could take deposits, checking, savings accounts, but they were not to do anything beyond that. They weren’t empowered to do anything beyond that like lending. All that had to be done in Knoxville if they were going to do any. Mainly it was a way for people to get their payroll checks cashed and to do whatever normal exchange, write checks, and that kind of stuff. So that was in September of ’43 when they came into Oak Ridge with two facilities. And that remained until the Bank of Oak Ridge – well, it even remained after, but then the Bank of Oak Ridge in 1953 was formed. Yeah, actually the first day the bank opened was in June of ’53. The announcement was made in January and the bank actually opened there in Jackson Square in June of ’53. And I’ll tell you a little more about Hamilton as probably discussed, or that situation. But, yeah, they were the only bank at the time and supposedly limited to just depository services. And I think this group saw that, this group of individuals saw the need for a bank that, if you’ll think about it, at that time we were – it wasn’t going to be long before we were converting from a government owned, government operated town to a privately owned, self-governing municipality. So that was in that switchover. And then that was in ’56. The bank organized in ’53. The city incorporated in ’56. Then in ’57 the government started to sell houses. Well, the Bank of Oak Ridge was very right positioned to really help that economic – that growth right there, that service there. We made more mortgage loans and helped people buy their houses, and all the remodeling that was going on to the houses that were bought. So this group apparently saw this coming and saw the need. See, the Hamilton technically could not have done that or should not have according to their powers, could not actually make those loans unless the people went to Knoxville to get the loans. Now I’m not sure they didn’t make a few here but anyway, that was the situation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now read the individuals that started the bank.
MR. AURIN: I just think if I can read this. It's very fine print but these are people I think you’ll recognize some of the names, if not most of them. In fact, I highlighted some. I told you – maybe I didn’t tell that story. Let me side track for just a second. After my father – I’m assuming he was laid off after the war. That’s the only thing I can assume because I don’t remember much discussion about it, but I can remember my mother and dad making sandwiches for a fella named Walter Oshner. He had a canteen service here in town and sold sandwiches and stuff and probably went out to plants with it, and this, that, and the other. Well, my mom and dad would work every night making those sandwiches at his shop for the next day’s delivery. And I can only assume that my dad was out of work during that period of time. Then he became – did I tell you, then he became a purchasing agent at the school. I don’t know if I mentioned that to you or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, you didn’t.
MR. AURIN: Okay. Well, he – after that period of unemployment, I’m going to call it unemployment I guess it was – he was fortunate enough to get a job at the Oak Ridge school system. And he went in as Purchasing Agent, and back then the school system was pretty thriving. It had seven elementary schools. I think that included Scarboro. There was the junior high school and high school. And I mean a bunch of kids and a bunch of need for – so he stayed there for twenty, twenty-five years, he retired. But he was purchasing agent for the Oak Ridge school system. I don’t know how I got off on that. But those twenty-one were, of course, Tom Lane, who I’ve already mentioned, McKee Alexander, John C. Barber, remember he had the Buick place. CC Brill was into Insurance, Carl Bruner, the store, Tommy Klein, I mentioned him before; Thomas Kleins, John De Persio, Jack Diamond, both those doctors, AH Gossard, William Van Hamilton, Eugene L. Joyce, AD McIntosh, Don J. McKay, the Oak Ridger, Sam Miller, remember worked with Horns at Samuels, Dana Nance, Walter Oshner, and that’s the name I mentioned a minute ago my father worked for a short time, William Pugh, Henry Ruley, Roger Swope, Glen Van Slyke, and Frank W. Wilson. Remember Judge Wilson. I remember Frank Wilson. Those were the original organizers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The forefathers of the Bank of Oak Ridge, a lot of the doctors involved.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, there was three or four that were doctors.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They had a great vision didn’t they?
MR. AURIN: They did and they’re the ones that raised the two among them a quarter million dollars that became the capital for the bank to organize to capitalize the bank. Now there were thirty-two other individuals that expressed interest in addition to them of buying stock of the Bank of Oak Ridge at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, the Bank of Oak Ridge continued for quite a few years but were they bought by another banking organization? What’s the story there?
MR. AURIN: Well, I joined then in ’59 and I left in ’84. I left in ’84. I took a job with Third National was in town at the time. They’re now Sun Trust but it was Third National. And I went over and I became President and CEO of Third National that operated in Anderson and Campbell County. And then the year after I left that would have been ’85 the bank was sold. They changed their name actually from Bank of Oak Ridge to Energy Bank. I don’t know if you remember that but they changed the name. and the reason for the change [Inaudible] during that time was we were interested in getting outside of Oak Ridge and delivering our services. And there were certain banks in trouble at that particular time in history and the FDIC would – if a bank got where it was near about ready to fail the FDIC would ask surrounding banks if they were interested in bidding on the deposit base of that particular bank. And if you were the high bidder then you got that deposit base and able to operate out of wherever that bank was located. Well, the bank then decided, well, if we’re going to get outside of Oak Ridge the name of Bank of Oak Ridge isn’t going to go too well in Kingston. I mean it should be something else. So Energy was the thing of the day at the Lab and everything else. Everything we talked about was Energy so the name became Energy Bank. We did end up buying the First National Bank – I mean the Kingston Bank and Trust Company from the FDIC and we bought the First National Bank of Oneida. So we ended up in those locations through purchasing from the deposit base or bidding on a deposit base from there. So anyway that was the reason for the name change. I leave in ’84. Commerce Union buys the Energy Bank or the old Bank of Oak Ridge in ’85. And then it goes through a number of changes. In fact, we used to kid as competition they were my competition then. We used to call them the Velcro Bank because it had to change the sign so many times. But they went from the Energy Bank to Commerce Union, then Commerce Union became Sovereign. And then Sovereign, CNS of Atlanta bought Sovereign. So then it was named CNS Sovereign. And then it was Nations Bank. And then Nations Bank was bought by Bank of America. So the original Bank of Oak Ridge is now Bank of America.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what the rate of interest was on a home loan back in the early days when they first started?
MR. AURIN: I would guess around four percent; somewhere in that neighborhood. There was a time when it got about eighteen percent. I mean the interest rates got up to sky high but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the prices of the homes that were sold in Oak Ridge at that time?
MR. AURIN: Well, if you remember when the houses were sold in Oak Ridge I think my father paid for the C house that we were in, forty-three hundred dollars. So I don’t know whether D went for more and B went a little less. I’d say the B’s were in the five, six thousand range probably.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what do you remember the requirements if I came in to the bank and I wanted to get a loan to buy my D house? What would I have to put up as far as money is concerned?
MR. AURIN: Well, the general rule of thumb, the best I can remember back that early and probably to the extent it was is generally you’d need twenty percent down. And the bank would finance eighty percent. That was a general rule. We really got away from that. The banking industry really got away from that and that’s what caused all of our problems in ’08 if you recall the whole economy going. I think that was the start of it. When we started getting into home loans of nothing down, a hundred percent financing, an old banker told me one time, “I guess,” he says, “if you don’t own any part of it you don’t care too much about it. And so if you don’t have anything in it just leave it, walk off and leave it.” I mean what had he lost, you know. But I think that was getting away from – they’re back to it now, the twenty percent down. And it makes it difficult, and my wife’s a realtor, and it makes it more difficult now to find an eligible buyer because the twenty percent’s hard to come by. But I still think it's the right thing to have that. I guess it was during the Clinton administration was when the things really changed as far as lending. I mean the thought throughout the country was everybody should own a home. Well, that’s a good thought. Everybody should own a home. But you got to be able to pay for it, too. So everybody – it's not even feasible that everybody can own a home because of the requirements to keep it up and even to live in it. We’re getting kind of astray I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: These individuals that started the bank, is it like any business, as the business prospers they get money for their investment? How does that work as far as they – if you’re a backer of a bank?
MR. AURIN: Well, it's just like any stock company really. I mean the form is you buy into, say a bank and you get so many shares for that. Well, generally then there’s the way – there’s a market for those shares depending on how well or how bad you do. The better you do the more valuable those shares are. Now there’s different ways those get priced. If it's like a Bank of Oak Ridge in those days that didn’t have a real marketplace, they weren’t listed on an exchange, you know, stock exchange, it's more or less word of mouth or just what you, Don, think it's worth and you and Bill think it's worth. And in some way it all kind of blends into a figure that it's about. So as the Bank of Oak Ridge did better I think the best I can remember their stock got up to thirty-two dollars and fifty cents. And maybe it started at twenty or fifteen. But it sold for – a bank that’s not listed on the stock exchange the way it becomes valued is sort of – I don’t know, it's sort of a – they look at what your earnings were in the past year compared to the other years, or an investor does, and thinks that it's going to grow some more so they’re willing to pay X amount. And once they- they kind of set it. If I go to you and say, “I’d like to sell some of my Bank of Oak Ridge stock, and what do you want for it?” And I’ll say, “Well, the last I heard it sold for twenty – I want twenty-one fifty,” and you got to decide whether you think it's worth twenty-one fifty. But so it's not – you don’t get any direct payment from the bank. It's what you can sell your stock for. Now the only other thing you can get is the dividend if the Bank declares a dividend on your stock. Then yes, you get a check from the bank from the dividend that they paid out for that particular share.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you meet your future wife and what’s her name?
MR. AURIN: Belinda Baker was her maiden name. I knew Belinda in high school but only knew her. She was a freshman when I was a senior. And actually it came about through the banking business. In fact, she was – Mike Mal, my friend that I said about Camelot a while ago, he and I were out at the Country Club one evening and of all the things playing Bingo back in those years. And in walks Belinda with a friend. I think it was Bill Maddox’s wife.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Billy.
MR. AURIN: No, no, no, Savannah. And Mike was saying I think Savannah and Belinda were talking about – Belinda had just order a car and had not worked out any financing. And she’s [Inaudible] Belinda’s telling me this with Mike – he’s at the Bank of Oak Ridge. So the next day Belinda comes down to the bank and tells me she has ordered a car. And I said, “Well, what kind of down payment do you have?” And she says, “What does that mean?” And I told her that back then we needed five percent or whatever it was. And she said, “Well, I’ve got an uncle over at [Inaudible] that sold the car. He maybe can loan me five hundred dollars. I don’t know.” And I can remember telling her, I said, well look, I think it's going to be a hard – I knew it was going to be a hard sell for us to make it. I said you go to the dealer and tell them – and I was really trying to get the dealer to finance it which I ended up getting him to do. I said, “Tell him we’ll do it for four percent but I’ve got to have five hundred dollars down.” So she worked out a better deal at the dealership to get it. But before she left I said, “Belinda, I’ll tell you what, there’s a meeting in Knoxville, there’s a bank meeting in Knoxville and there’s a dinner meeting and would you like to go with me?” And so that was our first, I guess you called it a date. And so that’s how I really – and so I ended up paying for that car after all. We got married six months later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have children?
MR. AURIN: Two children, of course, who are grown. Our oldest is Craig. He lives here in town, works for an environmental company out of Norcross, Georgia. And he’s an environmental engineer. And he’s married to Wendy, his wife, and they have two boys and a girl. The two boys are stepsons. She had been previously married but they were only four and five when Wendy and Craig got married so their his sons really. And then they have a seven-year-old who is our youngest granddaughter, McKenzie. Then our daughter Amy – Craig went to East Tennessee State, Amy went to Auburn. I always hold that against her but she went to Auburn. And she ended up getting her CPA. She’s no longer practicing. She has three children. One just graduated from Auburn last year. I’ve got a sophomore granddaughter at Auburn, that’s Emily. And Cameron had gotten out earlier. And then Lucy is a senior in high school and so she’ll be going to Auburn more than likely. So they live in Marietta, Georgia.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You met your wife – she’s a realtor today. She still works.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, she owns Realty 100. That’s her company and she’s been in business over twenty-five years and still at it. I just stay home and spend her money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How have you seen the city grow or maybe not grow since you first came to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: As you know we’ve had our troubles with growth. We’ve stayed about the same population-wise for a number of years, twenty-nine, twenty-seven, thirty thousand. I guess what concerns me, I guess, about the city now it's totally different than it was when we grew up. I know that you agree but I mean the demographics are changing and changing pretty fast, and not for the better in my opinion, just the demographics. As you recall we were a town of average age of twenty-nine back in the ‘40s and had the highest population of PhD per thousand in the world probably. And all that’s changed. And I think it still goes back to, and I’ve observed as President of the Chamber, or Chairman of the Chamber, and I’ve been involved in various parts of the economic development of the city. But I still think it comes back to housing. It's a big part of our – it's always been our problem. Everybody’s studied it and never figured it out. And it's becoming a similar problem now with our changing demographics and our aging of our people. And our cemestos now, our parents, I mean the older people that – well, I’m a parent now but we’re too old to have our parents still living. But they’re getting to where they’re of age that they can’t keep their property up. And a lot of when they sell it's going into rental property. And that changes the demographics, the makeup of the type of individual in Oak Ridge. And this is my terminology but – and I wish we could have taken advantage of it but I guess it's due to our land. Nobody’s figured out exactly why we can’t make it in housing. But Harden Valley, how Harden Valley has sprung up, and I call it the new Oak Ridge because that’s basically where your – most of your [Inaudible] people are going. We love – we would love to have that type of student in our high school. We don’t have the number of [Inaudible] children in our school system that we used to have. And that makes a difference. I mean as far as you don’t see as many Merit scholars on the front page as you used to see. You used to see twenty, and maybe you see five now, Merit scholars.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think the reason – some of the problem may be that we don’t have a one shopping center for people to shop in? Our mall is not really a mall anymore.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. Well, you know I guess I should ask my wife that shops more than – I don’t know. I can’t answer it directly but when somebody first comes into Oak Ridge is it that noticeable? Is that something they’re really looking at or what is it they’re looking at? It's bound to be – it can’t be a plus. Now how big a negative it is I don’t know. It’s definitely an eye sore or something we need to do something about, and I think everybody’s hands are tied because Council can’t. It’s private property. I mean you can’t – the Council can’t or city officials can’t tell them what to do, so. But housing is still a problem. I think – I don’t know what the answer is. I wish we had a way of getting more people that work at the plants to live here. In fact, Don, I think it's out – I’m sure this is accurate but pretty accurate, or at least I was told this, that in our school system now, and I wouldn’t have thought this a few years ago. Over a third of our students throughout the system are on some kind of assistance program. And so there’s a big change in Oak Ridge as far as from when we grew up till now. I feel I’m still high on Oak Ridge. I think it's got a lot of potential. We just still got to solve the housing problem. I’m so glad to see council taking action on – and the city taking action on blighted areas. They’ve now got certain things done through I think the legislature that allows them to do certain things that can bring a property up to where somebody can live in it and not have such rundown areas. But they got a lot of work to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And do you feel Oak Ridge is becoming a retirement community because of the age of the people still there?
MR. AURIN: Yeah, we’re definitely – we’ve got more than our – than the average of retired people but that’s not all bad. I don’t think that’s all bad.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, Oak Ridge is a secret city. I believe we’re still a secret city in some ways as far as attractions of businesses and people to come into the city. Turkey Creek has hurt us because it's so close and it has all that variety of shopping.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, with the way this road system is now, and everything, you can be wherever you want to shop with whatever you’re looking for. I mean you can be fifteen or twenty minutes from it. so that’s the big thing. I don’t know how they’re going to solve for Oak Ridge. I don’t think we’ll ever see retail back here. I mean to this level that some people want it just because of that factor. And you can understand. I mean if you were going – if you – and I don’t know the retail business but I know you got to have a certain catchment area and a certain this and certain that. But when they look and see that it takes some people maybe twelve minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes to be able to shop that’s some tough competition to come up against.
MR. HUNNICUTT: If you have a few words to describe your life as you’ve lived it in Oak Ridge what would those words be?
MR. AURIN: I’m going to steal my friend’s word, Camelot. We did grow up in Camelot. I mean there couldn’t have been a better setting to grow up. No crime, no unemployment. I mean you didn’t worry. Our parents didn’t have to worry about anything, even traffic. I’d say traffic fatalities weren’t until – close to 1950. And so I just say I’m fortunate to have grown up in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's been my pleasure to interview you. I know this interview will be an addition to Oak Ridge history. Someone in the future may be writing a paper about Oak Ridge history and they pull this interview up and some of your testimony will be used in their paper. And I thank you very much for your time.
MR. AURIN: Well, thank you, Don, for inviting me and it's been a pleasure and I just hope that it will be of some value to someone.
MR. HUNNICUTT: One thing, show us the pin you have on your collar and tell us about that. I almost forgot that.
MR. AURIN: Oh, I don’t know if you can pick that out but this…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Turn it a little bit around that way.
MR. AURIN: This is my father’s – he called it an A pin. It says on the top Manhattan Project with a big A. and then right under that the word bomb, so A Bomb. And right under that I don’t know but there’s three, sort of, columns and I don’t know. It looks more like K-25 to me. But I don’t know if it's a – do you know, Don, what that is? You said your father got one of these.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's a symbol for the Corps of Engineers, I believe it is.
MR. AURIN: Okay, is that the Corps of Engineers symbol? So I think each worker after it was announced that there was an A Bomb received one of these. And so I just wore it today in memory of my dad.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, thank you again for your time for this interview.
MR. AURIN: Thank you Don.
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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ORAL HISTORY OF RALPH AURIN
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
December 11, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is December 11, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the studio of BBB Communications, LLC., 170 Robertsville Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take an oral history from Mr. Ralph Aurin, 130 Emory Lane, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, about living in Oak Ridge. Ralph, please state your full name, place of birth, and date please.
MR. AURIN: I’m Ralph E. Aurin, Jr., born in Knoxville, Tennessee. And you need what else?
MR. HUNNICUTT: The date.
MR. AURIN: February 15, 1936.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your father’s name and place of birth?
MR. AURIN: He was Ralph E. Aurin, Sr. and he was born in Knoxville, Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you recall the date?
MR. AURIN: 1906, April 10th, it was 1906.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mother’s maiden name and place of birth and date?
MR. AURIN: Okay. It was Opal Malachote Aurin. Her place of birth was in Missouri. So help me, I can’t think of the name of the town in Missouri. And that was in November of 1912.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s school history? Do you recall how far he went in school?
MR. AURIN: My father didn’t go but through the eighth grade. I think he did go back and get his GED. His father owned a fair amount of rental property in Knoxville. And I can remember my dad saying that his job was to keep all those places clean. But he did, I think, go back and get a GED.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mom’s school history?
MR. AURIN: She completed high school at Old Knoxville High School.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have sisters and brothers?
MR. AURIN: Yes, I have an older sister, Bebe. She’s two years older than I. My next youngest sister is Nancy. Bebe by the way lives in Naples, Florida. Nancy is living in Tacoma, Washington. And those two were born in Knoxville and came with our family to Oak Ridge. My youngest sister Linda was born here in Oak Ridge in 1945. And she’s deceased. She passed away about a year and a half ago.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned your father worked with his father’s rental – with rental property. Is that all of his work history you recall?
MR. AURIN: Well, except prior to coming to Oak Ridge. I don’t know what he did in the interim after the Depression wiped out all of my grandfather’s property. So he didn’t have to worry about cleaning it up anymore. But he did – before coming – before getting the job at Y-12 he was a meter reader for the Knoxville Utility Board. And at that time we had, what, my mother and three children he was trying to support on that particular job. And that’s why it was so grand, to use the word, that he was able to get a job at Y-12. I’ll say that has bound, has boosted our family’s standard of living being able to come over to the Manhattan Project and work. And just think of the jobs that the Manhattan Project did for this region, not only for my father but others. And so it was very instrumental in our family’s life. The whole Manhattan Project was very beneficial to our family.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the address of the home in Knoxville where your family lived?
MR. AURIN: Well, I don’t remember the street address but it was on Atlantic Avenue. That’s sort of near Fountain City area.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work any during those years?
MR. AURIN: No, my mother was strictly a homemaker. She, as far as I know she – well, she worked a little outside the home during our, during my growing up years but mainly she was one of the traditional women of those days. In fact, my mother never even learned to drive. My father took care of everything as far as that sort of thing. So she was really a homemaker.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What schools did you attend in Knoxville before you came to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: I attended a parochial school. It was the First Lutheran Parochial School. And what a contrast, Don. The school I went to was in the first and second grade. The school housed in one room the first through the sixth grade was all in one room. And I leave that setting to come to Oak Ridge to probably one of the best-operated school systems in the country. So what a change for me and for my siblings to be able to leave that type of educational setting all in one room, first to sixth grade, to a school system that was tops in the country, had new schools. I mean had everything we needed as far as supplies, probably the most up-to-date technology at the time, probably the most talented school teachers, and probably the most highly paid in maybe the South. So for me looking back on it what an opportunity for education we had and all that due to the Manhattan Project for us at least.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where the school was located in the Knoxville area?
MR. AURIN: Well, it's no longer there. It was the First Lutheran school/church. It was on the corner of Fifth and – do you know where the Knoxville mission is now, the Knoxville – I guess it's a mission. It's - well, it's right on Fifth Avenue and something…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Broadway.
MR. AURIN: Broadway – I guess you’re right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Broadway, right.
MR. AURIN: And now it's located further down Broadway. They still have a school. It's through the eighth grade I think now that they still have a school. They got them out of that one room I hope.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there a lot of children in that one room you mentioned?
MR. AURIN: You know, my memory’s pretty vague. I actually thought it was years but no. I’d say I don’t remember the room being very large. I’d say there could have been forty or fifty kids in there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So do you remember how the teacher taught first through sixth grade students?
MR. AURIN: No. I’ll tell you one thing I can remember. If you talked too much you had to go stand in the corner and you had to hold up this big ole dictionary for as long as you could hold it. I can remember that. I can remember the bad – the things I did bad, or all that. But as far as actually classroom instruction and all that, of course, if you talked too much you’re going to find out I was an average student. And I really wasn’t interested too much in what was going on in school. I was interested more in what was going on after school. But I really can’t recall much of that, how that was operated with one teacher. But they did it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to school?
MR. AURIN: I walked.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How far away was the house?
MR. AURIN: Next door…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very convenient.
MR. AURIN: In fact, that is part – my father had belonged to that church for – his father had. And my dad was actually in addition to doing what I told you, he was on the Knoxville Utility Board, he was the janitor for the school afterhours. We actually lived in the parsonage, and the minister did not live there at that time. We actually lived right there on the church grounds.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So your father heard about Oak Ridge or Manhattan Project and they’re hiring people, and what type of job did he come to Oak Ridge and apply for?
MR. AURIN: He was a chemical process operator at the Y-12 plant. And I assume he did that until after the war. And as you know we don’t know a lot about what he did do because he was one – he didn’t talk about his job. Like they were supposed to not talk about his job. But his title was chemical process operator. And he did that until the end of the war.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now when he got the job in Oak Ridge did you still live in Knoxville or did you move to Oak Ridge later?
MR. AURIN: No. We were living in Knoxville. I don’t know exactly when my dad started work. I want to think it was early ’43 and probably I don’t think he was here in ’42 but it was probably early ’43 and we had to wait on housing. And we moved here in November of ‘43.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did he get back and forth from Knoxville to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: I think he rode a bus. In fact, I’m sure he had to bus because I know he didn’t have a car, so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know how he found out about employment in Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: I have no idea. Just back then I had no idea how he found out about it. But I’m sure word of mouth or whatever was going on at the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of school clothes did you wear when you went to that school in Knoxville? Do you recall?
MR. AURIN: No, we didn’t have uniforms. I guess I just really don’t – Don, you’re going way back there on me, man. I don’t know. I’m assuming I wore whatever the day clothing was more than likely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when the family moved to Oak Ridge how many came total?
MR. AURIN: Total came – in fact, let me tell you about the bus ride over here. I can remember that. On the bus coming over to move to Oak Ridge was my mother and two sisters and myself. So there was four of us. And what made me think of this this morning, I don’t know if you read this morning’s Oak Ridger, but the Muddy Boot Award was awarded to three individuals apparently yesterday. And as you know that’s an award that recognizes individuals contributions to the city in various ways. And the Muddy Boot Award actually started – the idea was generated back in the Roane Anderson Economic Council. I can remember being involved, not in necessarily naming that but in that council. And then it's successor is E-Tech, which awarded this Muddy Boot. And it signifies back in the days, 30s, 40s, all the mud in Oak Ridge. Well, you asked me about coming over here. Well, my mom had bought us a pair of galoshes. Do you remember the term galoshes?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah.
MR. AURIN: Well, they call them boots today I guess but I don’t know where the word came.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rubber overshoes…
MR. AURIN: Rubber overshoes – now where the name galoshes, I can’t even spell it, I don’t know where it came from. But anyway, we had them on. And I can still remember that bus pulling up in East Village. East Village used to have a shopping center that’s not as – it didn’t thrive like Grove Center is now but there’s still a store or something down there. But it's small in comparison. But anyway, that’s where the bus pulled in. and I remember stepping off the bus and the mud goes over the top of my galoshes. So I was thinking this morning that I was awarded a muddy boot when I was seven-years-old.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s go back to the galoshes a little bit. They were made out of rubber, and if I remember right they had these little metal snaps on the side. You put it through and pull them back over and they clamped against themselves. And they were about, what, four or five inches above the ankle or so.
MR. AURIN: Yeah or close to the knee for me at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So that mud had to be pretty deep to go across the top of your galoshes.
MR. AURIN: Well, I’m sure everybody that’s talked about Oak Ridge remembers the mud if they were here and the boardwalks. That’s the way we avoided the mud. And whoever came up with that idea, and I’m sure they did because they couldn’t lay a foundation in what it would take to put concrete down. I guess they had blacktop then or asphalt. But I wonder if anybody’s ever knows or it had to set some kind of world record for the number miles that we had of boardwalks in Oak Ridge. But that’s the way we avoided mud. If you remember…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, the boardwalks was miles and miles of wood inlaid. And you can imagine how long it took each boardwalk to be made. Later they were replaced with concrete and then of course the streets were asphalt.
MR. AURIN: They used to go back in the woods, remember that, there were trails, they would go everywhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was a real convenient way of getting to different places by taking shortcuts through the woods and…
MR. AURIN: I want to know, I’m assuming somewhere there’s an estimated number of miles that those things covered. But it was amazing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now you said you got off the bus at the Grove, at the little shopping center there on Tennessee Avenue. Do you recall coming through the gate? What year would this be by the way?
MR. AURIN: Well, that’d be ’43.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall coming through maybe Elza Gate or Solway?
MR. AURIN: Just that I don’t remember that time but I definitely remember coming through the gates on many occasions.
MR. HUNNICUTT: We’ll talk about that a little later. I was just curious about the bus coming to that particular point and letting you off.
MR. AURIN: Do you remember I was about seven-years-old then I guess. So I don’t know what a seven-year-old remembers but I can’t remember it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, when you got off the bus what happened then?
MR. AURIN: Other than stepping in the mud…?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, after you decided to get your feet back up out of the mud.
MR. AURIN: You know I guess, I can’t remember, if we walked. We lived on – the first house we had was a flattop on Athens Road. Now Athens – that part of Athens Road has now been renamed Arkansas for some reason. So when I lived there it was on Athens and it just, oh, you just come. There’s a little dip. If you’re going – if you’re here at the site you just take the road. We just lived two city blocks from the main part of Elm Grove. And so probably walked to the house. I can’t remember. We probably just walked down to the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now maybe that was instead of Elm Grove, maybe that was West Village. Could that be…
MR. AURIN: No, no, we were in the east end of town now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, but I mean East Village.
MR. AURIN: I said Elm Grove. You said Elm Grove a while ago. You got me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: East Village.
MR. AURIN: East Village, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, when you said Athens and Arkansas that’s East Village.
MR. AURIN: That’s East Village.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you lived in a flattop. How many bedroom flattop was it?
MR. AURIN: That one was – I think that was a two bedroom flattop? It could have been a three. I know the house we next moved to was a three bedroom. More than likely that was a three bedroom with the size family we had.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how the flattop was heated?
MR. AURIN: Oh yeah. I remember the stove in the center and you kept the doors open in the winter so you could get some heat. And I’ll tell one on my dad. When we moved from that location we moved from there over to West Austin Lane right behind Glenwood School. And I can remember the summer. Of course, water was free then, if you remember. My dad would put a sprinkler on top of the flattop and that kept it somewhat cool. It kept the sprinkler running on top of the roof and that kept some of the flattop cool.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He’s a pretty clever man.
MR. AURIN: Well, what – that was a coal-fired furnace.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Coal-fired – do you remember the old coal bins that they would drop the coal in. Where were they located?
MR. AURIN: These were located out on the street. If you had a flattop – the people that were in asbestos, they had those coal bins in the house, but those of us that lived in flattops at that time you had it out on the street.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you ever remember seeing a small escape door in the flattop that you could get out in case you couldn’t get out through the only door. They only had one door coming in.
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I have heard about some flattops that had an escape door.
MR. AURIN: Don, that’s a new one. Now if it had one surely as a kid I would have found it, but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, I lived in one too and I don’t remember it but apparently some did and some didn’t.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, no, I don’t remember having one. But West Austin Lane was probably – well, now see I started out in Elm Grove, school at Elm Grove. And for some reason during that year they moved some of us up to Cedar Hill. And I think it lasted two or three months and then they moved us back. I never knew why unless it was a crowding problem….
MR. HUNNICUTT: I remember one time they had a fire in the school.
MR. AURIN: In Elm Grove….
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. AURIN: Oh.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And that’s probably the reason they moved you.
MR. AURIN: I don’t remember the fire but I remember going up there and having to come back. And then we moved over to a flattop on West Austin Lane right behind Glenwood School. In fact, West Austin Lane is no longer there because when the new school was built that property was needed. So those houses were taken down and the new school built.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you think it was a three bedroom flattop which would let your sisters have a bedroom and you by yourself with your parents.
MR. AURIN: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which makes sense…
MR. AURIN: Uh-huh
MR. HUNNICUTT: The first day you went to Elm Grove School, what do you remember about going to school?
MR. AURIN: Don, you know, I’ll be honest with you. I do not remember – I can remember most everything at Glenwood, but for some reason Elm Grove is somewhat foggy for me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’d be the third grade you attended.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. but I can remember being with much more kids than I was used to being with, and I don’t know if I really remember this but surely I recognize that difference in supplies, equipment, just everything that the Oak Ridge school system had compared to where I had started school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You probably had more kids in one – in your homeroom than you had in the whole school you attended in Knoxville.
MR. AURIN: That’s true.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember any of your teachers’ names?
MR. AURIN: I don’t know if Miss Blanchard was at – that’s the first name I can remember in a teacher in elementary school. And she may have been our third grade teacher but I just can’t remember exactly her – what my teachers in Elm Grove’s names were.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what grades did you attend at Elm Grove?
MR. AURIN: Third grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just third only…
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then you attended Glenwood?
MR. AURIN: Then we moved to West Austin Lane and I guess that precipitated the move to then to Glenwood School, I mean officially then. So I went to the fourth through the sixth grade at Glenwood. The thing I guess I remember, like I said, I was an average student and I was still more interested in what was outside than inside the school. But the thing I can remember most about that period of my life, the fourth through sixth grade, is the summers. In Oak Ridge each playground, we called them playgrounds – the playgrounds were attached to the schools, like Glenwood, Pine Valley, Cedar Hill, Linden, those schools – each one of them in the summer had a full time playground director and an assistant director. And it was open I think from about nine to four or five. And this is summer. And I know my mother just loved living in Oak Ridge because here we would go and I would spend more time than my sisters. At nine o’clock in the morning I’d leave, come home for lunch. I’d leave and be home about five o’clock. What went on at those it's just unreal what we had at those playgrounds, every piece of equipment you could think of to play football, softball, we had track. We had all kind of arts and crafts. And we had organized leagues. We would play in touch football or softball. We would leave – we would play Linden playground or the Pine Valley or the Cedar Hill depending on what the schedule said. Well, when we had the games at Linden, which was on the far west end of town, at that time Linden was up on LaSalle Road, the old Linden site. We’d all get on a bus and then it was free, and we’d have transfers. You’d have to transfer two or three times to get to Linden. But we’d show up at Linden, play our ballgame, do the same thing and come home. It was unreal. I mean we’d have marble tournaments, we had – remember marbles. They probably don’t even know what those are nowadays I don’t think. But we’d have those tournaments. The winner of your playground would get to go to the city. And by the way, I got to go to the city because I won ours at the Glenwood. But those were some years, I’ll tell you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s talk about the marble tournament. Tell me how you played marbles.
MR. AURIN: Well, marbles is you draw just a circle in the dirt and you put some marbles in the center and then each of you, how many – I don’t know if there was a rule on how many of them there can be. There can be just one-on-one or maybe three or four. You remember, you played them. And don’t you remember the taw, that was what you used to hit the marbles with. And if you really knew somebody or you had enough marbles to trade we bartered those things if you remember. You remember the steely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. AURIN: The steely was, I guess, a ball bearing probably from the plants. I guess that’s where they came from. But didn’t they cost you twenty of your glass marbles just to get one steely. So you had to win a bunch of marbles to be able to own a steely if you remember. But kids wouldn’t even know what marbles are nowadays.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Sort of like playing cards, you ante up and so many marbles were put in by each player if I remember right. So you shot outside the circle and as long as you knocked a marble out you kept shooting. Is that the way it was?
MR. AURIN: Yeah and the more you – if you – if I got more marbles out than you did I won.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember that everybody wanted a real cherry marble, a real red looking marble.
MR. AURIN: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was the one generally you used as your shooter and you didn’t want to lose that one.
MR. AURIN: That’s right. But so those were some, I guess, I remember those years was I guess fondly that – like I said it was so well organized and free. I mean that just came with living here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of classes do you remember when you were going to Glenwood that they had?
MR. AURIN: Well, I can remember I guess – I can remember English. I can remember some History. I can remember – I guess I remember more about the fifth grade. In fact, I used to sit next to Glen Greer, Dr. Greer in town, the dentist, Glen Greer. And he was a student, he was a good student. But I’d say I can remember Writing. We had Writing classes, Spelling. I guess the normal Reading, Writing, Arithmetic.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about Music and Art?
MR. AURIN: I did not participate in Music and there’s no way I could participate in Art other than what was just given. I mean that. I didn’t elect to do any music and, boy, do you look back now and wish you did. The days I spent playing softball and football and doing the track and all those things. I wish I would have been putting a little time on the piano or the saxophone or like my grandson who plays a saxophone, his first year of saxophone, and a guitar. And here I don’t know the first note of music.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, boys do what boys do in those days.
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the safety patrol in school?
MR. AURIN: Oh, I got to be one. I guess you did too.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, tell me about your experience with the safety patrol.
MR. AURIN: Okay. The safety patrol, the best I can remember the thing you liked most was being – was getting to put that white belt on and being recognized as a safety patrol. I mean that was a step above that you had achieved something or something I guess, or at least that’s the feeling, the best I remember. And we got to help with getting kids on and off the school bus. I don’t remember all the functions we were in but it was a big deal to be a safety patrol.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You kind of had an authority over the other kids.
MR. AURIN: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Except if they got out of line you could get them back in line.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. And maybe I liked that because I was so small. Did I show you – I think I mentioned this badge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah, we’ll get to that in just a minute, yeah.
MR. AURIN: But on the back of it it says how big you are. This was at twelve-years-old. And so I was a pretty small child, kid, growing up I mean until I got out of high school is when I got my height but I was a pretty small child. But anyway, you’re such an authority figure I don’t know if I – I don’t know if I used that but I’m sure it was there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a bicycle in those days?
MR. AURIN: Yes. Well, we got a bicycle one Christmas I remember when we lived on, there on West Austin, so yeah. we had bicycles and, man, was that a form of transportation. I mean you rode those everywhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother – was she very strict on you and your sisters during those days?
MR. AURIN: Well, like I said, if my mom was here now I think she would probably agree with us. She had it made as far as in the summers at least because we were out of her hair, man. We were on the playground. But one rule we had, and as you’ll recall, we played every kind of game at night and in the summer that you could play; fox and hound, Kick the Can, all that stuff. But our rule was, and I guess a lot of families had this rule, when those street lights came on we were supposed to be home. So generally – and we got permission occasionally to play Fox and Hound at night. That meant after the street lights were out. And you remember what that game was. You take some chalk and a group of you go out ahead of time and you mark on the street where you’ve been with X’s and then hounds come after you and try to find you and you try to stay ahead of them. But anyway, we got permission to play that after dark on occasion.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about how you played Kick the Can.
MR. AURIN: Golly! I don’t know if I remember the rules. It was sort of – wasn’t it sort of like softball or a game where you…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you had a can…
MR. AURIN: Well, I know you kick a can. That’s for sure. We kicked the can, but you know I’m trying to think of exactly how the game went.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think that someone had to be it and they stayed around the can. And everybody else went out and sort of hid. And then this person…
MR. AURIN: And then they’d try to sneak by to get you…
MR. HUNNICUTT: …would go out and you’d try to sneak by that person who was it, and you kicked the can.
MR. AURIN: Thanks for bringing me back.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think that’s the way it was.
MR. AURIN: I think you got it. You’ve hit the can on the head.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yeah. Well, let’s back up a little bit. Do you remember how your mother washed clothes for you kids in those days?
MR. AURIN: Well, I can remember the old washer ringer. In other words, you got to wash it on the agitator type thing and then she had to take them out of that and there was a hand rolled ringer that you usually, that I think was on top of this tub. And she rung those through, ran those through this ringer, and then out they went on the clothesline.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the ladies in the neighborhood at the clotheslines talking to each other about local gossip and things of that nature?
MR. AURIN: No, Don, I don’t. They might have done it and I probably wasn’t paying any attention but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember about the neighborhoods, your buddies and pals?
MR. AURIN: Oh yeah. Well, that’s a – growing up on West Austin Lane I was thinking this morning, I was working down there for some thoughts. And that was probably, like I said, the best years of my young life because on that street were the Mitchell’s. They had three or four boys, Billy Mitchell, Freddy Mitchell, Bobby Mitchell. You might of known some of those boys.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I know who Bobby Mitchell is.
MR. AURIN: He was a pretty good football player. And Lavoy Killian, do you know Lavoy?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, I do.
MR. AURIN: Lavoy and I – I used to talk to Lavoy like you and I are talking right now and I still see him. He works out at Centennial, cuts out there. And he and I still talk but oh, I have so much more difficulty. I used to play – I played with him every day. I could talk to him just like you and I are talking. And Lavoy was quite – I mean when you look back at the years he grew up with his handicap was able to play on that playground with all of us, he was fast. I don’t know what he did when he went to – he went over to TSD. And I think he was on their track team.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was.
MR. AURIN: But, I mean, he and I would race and he’d beat me every time. I was fairly fast but, man, Lavoy could beat me hands down in a race. And we had had a bunch of them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I saw him at the high school at a track meet one time. And that’s when they had the hundred-yard dash and he won it and he was like a rabbit. He was gone.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. Well, he and I played together on that same playground and that was – that’s another experience when you look back on it being able to grow up a person with that particular handicap and yet it didn’t even seem like a handicap.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think that the people that was here in the early days they all blended together and got along with each other?
MR. AURIN: The ones that we were associated with definitely did. I don’t remember any real friction of even my playmates or even families that we were associated with. I really think it's the times were different. I just think – well, families were different and you probably heard people say this. I think that’s a problem with the whole country or world today now. The family unit is not what it used to be. All these families that lived on West Austin Lane knew each other. We were out in the yard. We were all – they were conversing. Today kids aren’t out in the yard. People don’t even know who lives next door to them. So I just think to say it simply I think all the families on West Austin Lane were a family in a way because the kids intermingled, they were in the house, out in each other’s houses. So we were really just one big family.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where your mother did her grocery shopping?
MR. AURIN: Hmm…Now there was a store that in the early years it was just a – they called it a commissary, sort of like a commissary, there in East Village. And I can remember them standing in line especially when certain products came in, tobacco products, meat; the lines would be backed up a mile probably trying to get in line to get some of those particular items. So yeah, there was a grocery store right there in the East Village the best I remember. I think they called it a commissary or something like that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Show me your badge and tell me about the history by that badge you have on.
MR. AURIN: Okay, well I wore this today to show you…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Take it off, and let us see it.
MR. AURIN: Let me see if I can get that off. This is a badge that when you became twelve-years-old you were required to wear a badge to get in and out of the city. And it has your picture on it and it has a number here. This sticker number says resident 33735. Now I don’t know where they – whether that is of any significance as far as number, actual number. Then on the back it's typed in, Ralph E. Aurin, Jr. And then I signed it Ralph E. Aurin. It doesn’t look like I put a junior on it unless that’s what that clamp is back there. But I was four foot eleven inches, sixty-nine pounds. Now this is when I was seven-years old, twelve years old, brown hair, brown eyes. And date issued, 05/12/48, May the 12th.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you show that to the camera, turn that around?
MR. AURIN: The backside…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, the backside…
MR. AURIN: And so I was twelve in February, February the 15th. So this was done in May. So somewhere after your twelve-years old you were required to have this particular badge. It sort of looks like you’re in – it's got the height and the lineup. But anyway, that’s…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember where you went to get the badge, where you had to go?
MR. AURIN: No, I haven’t the foggiest idea how I got it. But I’ve kept it, you know, over the years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you had to wear that badge if you left the city and you came back in but other than that you didn’t have to wear it on an everyday basis?
MR. AURIN: No, we didn’t have to wear it daily the best I remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, let’s talk a little bit about leaving the city since you mentioned that. Now what do you remember about going through the gates and coming back?
MR. AURIN: Well, I just remember the uniformed guards and they had weapons the best I remember. And most of the time we left the city it was on a bus because like I said we didn’t own a car. But I have been – I was on occasion in cars and they would – I can remember they’d open the truck. A lot of times they’d have you get out of the car. They’d look under the Cts. To be honest with you I think they was looking for alcohol more than they were looking for anything else because as you know we were a dry county. And I think the challenge for the adults that year as to see I they could get the alcohol through the gate. I think that was the challenge. But for me remembering – I just remember having to get out of the car and then raising the trunk and doing that. On the buses all they did is I think – I don’t even know if they ever – they may have boarded a bus and looked through it. I just can’t recall. I recall more about the car than the bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was some of the places you went when you left the city?
MR. AURIN: The only place that I can remember we ever went was Knoxville. I mean that was about the only place that we ever went that I can recall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the route that you took to go to Knoxville in those days?
MR. AURIN: One at the old Solway Highway, I mean the old Oak Ridge Highway. I believe that was the way we actually got to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Across Solway Bridge and…
MR. AURIN: Yeah, across Solway Bridge and then going up left back then it wasn’t Big Foot. Big Foot’s up on the right. But I think that was…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Down through Karns…
MR. AURIN: Karns – I think that was the path the best I remember that we took to get to Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After you left Glenwood, you went to the junior high. Where was the junior high located when you attended it?
MR. AURIN: The junior high was where Robertsville Middle School is now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And the name of it was…
MR. AURIN: Jefferson Junior High School – it's an identical location of where the Robertsville Middle School is now. And I guess we were living on – I guess Chatham Lane. We moved from West Austin Lane to our first cemesto. It was a C house on Chatham Lane and that was – talk about a step up to get to go into a cemesto. And that’s the years I guess I lived on Chatham Lane while I was at junior high school. And from there we moved to our final destination, I guess, was on Decatur Road, another C house on Decatur off Delaware. And I spent my high school years there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what a C house looks like.
MR. AURIN: Okay, a C house was a three-bedroom house that had – oh, there was a bedroom wing that had the three bedrooms and a bath. And then you had a fairly large dining room/living room combination. And the kitchen was off of that, and a utility room. That’s where the furnace and the old – and the stove, and the coal bin was back there. Now all that’s been remodeled but the original C house that’s the way it was. And now that you brought it up I just thought, talk about a challenge for my father. Here we are in a C house, three girls. Now we’re of an age that they have to primp on account of – we were – my sister was two years ahead of me in high school. So say she was a senior, I was a sophomore, then we had Linda and Nancy below that. To go to church on Sunday morning with four women in the house and me and my dad to get ready for Sunday School, I mean get ready to go to Sunday School and church, I think he had to get up 5:00 in the morning and get out of there because he had four women trying to get ready, or four girls, one woman and three girls trying to get ready to go to church. So it's amazing how we made it with one bathroom compared to what kids have today. Every kid has their own bathroom about today. But quite a – but the C house was a big step up from the flattop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And how did you get to Jefferson down on Robertsville when you went to school?
MR. AURIN: School bus is the only thing I can tell you. I mean I know I didn’t ride a bicycle to school, I mean to that school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was there certain places that you stood to wait on the school bus or any bus?
MR. AURIN: Oh yeah, each school bus had a school bus stop you’d say and the kids would gather. The kids would gather there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you got on the bus and rode to and from your home to Robertsville and back. Do you remember when you were going to Robertsville what kind of classes you took different there than you were – that you took in Glenwood?
MR. AURIN: Well, to me it seemed like it was more – of course, we had the homerooms the best I remember. Was that in junior high school?
MR. HUNNICUTT: You did have homerooms in both situations.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, and then but it seemed like what was different is we went to different areas of the school for a particular class like Science, George Plumlee or whoever it was. Do you remember Mr. Plumlee?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. AURIN: He always told jokes, old Mr. Plumlee, but – and I can remember Miss Neff was my eighth grade teacher. But to answer your question, yeah, we went to Music. If you had Music you went to a different area where it was a little different than in the other schools.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about sports? Did you participate in sports in junior high?
MR. AURIN: Probably the biggest disappointment in my life to be honest with you Don was because I was a fairly good athlete or at least I was coordinated and I could just about keep up with Lavoy speed-wise, not quite, but just about. But I was so little that I could play sports, the playground sports that we played. So here I go out in the seventh grade for football. That was my dream to be able to play football. Well, I make it until we have the physical. And I can remember Coach Orlando coming up to me, or was it Stuhmiller – one of the two – and after that, after they probably looked at the weight charts. And as I told you what I weighed – I said I weighed – when I was twelve I weight sixty-nine pounds. So most of that – that’s close to the age of junior high school. So anyway, he comes up to me after the physical and he says, “Ralph, how would you like to be manager?” And I went home crying. So I was not – I didn’t have the size to play other than intramural sports in high school, junior high school and high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Coach Orlando was quite a unique individual, wasn’t he?
MR. AURIN: Really, I mean everybody would tell you about the coach. In fact, as you know, to this day at the high school before the football game starts you’ll hear them say, “Coach Orlando please report to the press box.” Yeah, they’d say that before every game. You could – he was really an amazing – he wasn’t a motivator but an amazing guy. He couldn’t make it in today’s system, I mean on account of the way he would – you could be going up for a krypton and all of a sudden you had a paddle in the rear end that could take your breath away. And you remember his paddle. And I can imagine that going on today but he had the respect of his kids. And the other thing I can remember about Coach, and I didn’t like him for this, he made us – and I don’t know if they did it when you were in school. I think it was seventh grade. You had to enter the boxing ring and box two rounds, I think. And I dreaded that day that I had to get in that ring. But everybody had to go through that. I don’t know what he was trying to teach but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: We interviewed a lady some time ago that she actually got in the ring and fought with a boy one time.
MR. AURIN: Oh really?
MR. HUNNICUTT: He got her to do that. I don’t remember who she was but quite unique.
MR. AURIN: You know who I think – and it’ll relate back to this, come to think of it, back to this group here. He’s not here to confirm this but I actually think my challenger was Bill Clary, Marge’s son, who is now, his son is the announcer for the Oak Ridge [Inaudible]. So it was his father that I had entered the ring with in the seventh grade.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, there was certainly a unique Physical Education program for kids in those days at the schools.
MR. AURIN: Oh, yeah. I don’t see – I mean we all were – we all must have been in pretty good shape.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have a paper route?
MR. AURIN: Yes, in fact, I thrived on that. I actually carried at one time I carried the journal I the morning and the Oak Ridger in the afternoon. So I had two paper routes at one time. I did also carry the [Knoxville News] Sentinel at one time. But I guess I did that – I can’t remember the first year I started, probably in junior high school and I did it up through, maybe up through a part of high school and learned so much, Don, about people then. I mean that did – back then you had – was telling Tom Hill this the other day, the ex-owner of the publisher in Oak Ridge. That was really a learning experience for kids. I learned more about people especially collecting. I mean you had to go out and collect your money. And I can remember one family actually, I’m going to use the word, beat me out of a week’s pay. They said they’d already paid me. Well, I did not keep books I mean like you’re supposed to have. But, boy, what your memory could do back then. You could remember about everything you did then. But that was a – that was really a unique learning experience, having a paper route. I think it was one of the better things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I think some of the customers just did it for spite just to see if they could get away with it. I had the same experience.
MR. AURIN: Did you?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. AURIN: Okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: One in particular, a lady said, “Come back next week. You come back next week, I paid you last week.” Finally, I just quit giving her the newspaper because I had to pay for it. But what about Coke bottles? Did you gather Coke bottles and sell Coke bottles?
MR. AURIN: Oh, yeah. Don’t you remember the games we used to play with the bottom of them where they – depending on where they were bottled.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Far Away…
MR. AURIN: Far Away – they played Far Away and you got yours free or you had to buy mine. Okay, if you want to talk about Coke bottles for just a second, Jim McMahan sold his drug store up on the corner, Jackson Square Pharmacy. Well, his father collected Coke bottles. And back in the basement of the store were those Coke bottles. And when Jim sold out, sold the store, and Dean’s Restaurant is in there now. If you’ll go in there Dean has as his salt and pepper shakes the Coke bottles that Dr. McMahan, Jim’s father, had collected. They’re up there now, so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember you would play Far Away and the way you could tell a bottle that was further than the other was how much it was skinned up on the outside. That was the way we detected – generally what was the farthest away.
MR. AURIN: Oh, now the way we played it, it was on the very bottom of them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, I mean the name was on the bottom but you could figure it had been around a long time, it traveled a long distance, I guess because it was skinned up on the outside.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, it had a little more travel.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about – did you ever collect lightning bugs and sell lightning bugs for money?
MR. AURIN: Oh, yeah, didn’t we all? Yeah, our whole – I guess all of my whole family. That was a challenge to see how many we could get.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what did you do with them after you collected them before you took to be sold? Where’d you keep them?
MR. AURIN: The best I remember we kept them – is this the way? I don’t know if they had instructions on how to keep or not. But the only thing I could remember doing is keeping them in a mason jar with holes in the top for ventilation or air. Maybe later days after they got improved they might have given us something, given the kids something to keep them in.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, that was the way it was. We put them in the refrigerator to…
MR. AURIN: Yeah, keep them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the home delivery of milkmen delivering milk to the house?
MR. AURIN: Sure do. In fact, I’m sure – back to West Austin Lane, we’d be out playing stick ball or whatever we were playing, Kick the Can or whatever it might be, and when the milk man came by and he was so kind, we couldn’t wait to get a piece of ice because that’s the way he kept his milk cold. He would give us a piece of ice. And that was really a treat.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember about how much money you would make selling newspapers when you had a paper route?
MR. AURIN: What did we earn, Don? Let’s see. Ten cents come to mind and a quarter comes to mind but I don’t know how or what percent. Did we get a quarter a week?
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t remember…
MR. AURIN: A dime a week…
MR. HUNNICUTT: It wasn’t much.
MR. AURIN: Per customer…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Two dollars was a whole lot of money in those days.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. Maybe it was a dime per customer per week that we collected or something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Assuming they paid us.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. We had a bill. We had to pay the bill whatever the bill was then it's up to us to make the difference. I mean we had – don’t you remember?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. AURIN: And I guess that taught us something back then that you had a bill to pay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It taught us that everybody wasn’t honest.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, right, it did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you left Jefferson and you went to the high school where was the high school located?
MR. AURIN: It's located where it is now. I don’t remember what year they came off the hill and went to where it's located now but that’s another unique thing for me. Again, coming out of, like I said, a parochial school, one room, to a brand new school at Elm Grove. Well, I got the privilege of just about going to a brand new high school then because it was built in ’52 and I graduated in ’54. So it was only two-years-old when I graduated.
MR. HUNNICUTT: There’s quite a difference from going to Jefferson and then going to the high school. What’d you see the big difference was?
MR. AURIN: Of course, you know, back then junior highs went through the ninth grade. And then ten, eleven, twelve went to high school. Again, I think the big thing was there was more intimidation factor I think there. I mean you didn’t mind going from that because you were going to the big high school, the older kids and all this. But again, the more structured or separate learning centers, I think, compared to being all in just one room. We still had homerooms but it seemed like that’s…
MR. HUNNICUTT: You got an opportunity to choose your classes.
MR. AURIN: Right, right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of classes did you take?
MR. AURIN: I didn’t take enough Math I know that for the major I went into in college. But I can remember core, selecting. I selected, I think you could select whether to take English or core or I think it was called core or at least senior English or something. If you thought you were going on to college you took the higher or the different English class, which I took. But I sure didn’t take enough Math. I didn’t go far. I didn’t get enough Math in my curriculum for when I got to college. I think I was very well prepared when I went to college in English, Literature, History area. But, boy, Math I had not gone far enough. I struggled with Math in college. But I think I was well – I could have been well prepared. But you’ll still talk about Oak Ridge students leaving Oak Ridge and going to college, they’ll tell you they’re much more prepared than their peers that first year especially, than most of their peers through other systems. So Oak Ridge is still got a very good school system that prepares their students.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Ralph, do you remember some of your teachers in high school?
MR. AURIN: Oh goodness. I remember – well, at first a few of the administrators. Do you remember Ms. Barnes. She was in Guidance. And Mama – I don’t think we called it to her face but we called her Mama Barnes. And let’s see, Mazel Turner, Ruth Benson – now I better not say what we called her behind her back. Let’s see. then in the – still in administration was Harold Banger. We called him “Five Fingers” the best I remember. Did you call him that or…
MR. HUNNICUTT: I’m not going to admit to any of that. But I remember these people, yes.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, and Ms. Cebrat in the…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was she the librarian?
MR. AURIN: The library, in the library, and Harold Dunnigan was the principal, one of the principals at the time. Of course, Don Bordinger was there and Jack Armstrong the coach. I’m trying to think who my homeroom teacher was. Maybe it was Mazel Turner, I guess, maybe it was. But Ms. Wayne was my Spanish teacher and I was probably one of her poorest students. But one of the things I can remember she said, and I remember this all my life is that – and I don’t think she was talking to me directly at this time, but I remember her making this comment. She said an intelligent person doesn’t know everything but knows where to find it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very true.
MR. AURIN: And I remember that all along. So I’ve had to remember where to find it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like school, high school?
MR. AURIN: Yes, I liked high school. I was not as involved as my peers. In other words, I kind of ran with Ben Greer, the president of our student body. But I was never inclined I guess to actually take on a role of like a class officer or something like that, that I was a pretty quiet kid apparently back in those days. Yet I feel like I had a good experience in high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about dating in high school? Did you do a lot of that?
MR. AURIN: No, not a whole lot. I did not do a lot of dating, some, but never did have a steady back then, a steady girlfriend in high school, but so you might ask how did I stay occupied. But I did a lot. We did – the thing I can remember in high school, too, is all the dances we’d have. And I loved to dance. And there was a place out near Gamble Valley that the – or Scarboro, that I think the Sartoma Club or something had a place out there. And on the weekend, on Friday nights we’d go out there. It was for high school kids. And they’d have music and we’d dance. And later I married Belinda Baker who graduated in ’57. So she was behind me but they started actually dancing outside in the cafeteria during lunch breaks at school. And when she – after I left high school – I left in ’54 so I started after that. so dancing was a big thing back then. Of course, the 50s music was made for dancing…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Rock and roll music…
MR. AURIN: …was made for dancing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the Wildcat Den, did you…
MR. AURIN: Yeah, I didn’t frequent the Wildcat Den. I wasn’t a regular. But I did go a lot. And we was talking about Coach Orlando. Nobody’s going to ever surpass Shep Lauder either. I mean he’s a legend in my mind for his years of shepherding us as youth especially at the Wildcat Den. And he had some problems to deal with. I mean kids have problems today. We didn’t have half the problems then. I guess what’d we have to worry about, tobacco and alcohol, I guess was the only thing that probably had to worry about those days. Just think what Shep Lauder would have to work with today.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, he was like a father figure for all the kids and especially the boys if I remember right.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, he sure was and he tried to keep them straight, those that were a little on the wayward side. He would do his best to keep them in line.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about in the summer time, did you frequent the swimming pool by the high school?
MR. AURIN: Yep. Yeah, as – I think I mentioned to you earlier, a good friend of mine, Mike Mal has written an article about what he calls Camelot. And he says that when somebody asks him where he grew up he says Camelot. And then they say where is that? and he says – then he tells them about Oak Ridge. But in that little narrative that I think I gave you that he wrote he even mentions it, and I can remember exactly what, the way he says it. In there he’s talking, he says, do you remember the day you had the courage to go of the high diving board at the Oak Ridge swimming pool? And the way he says it – I can remember that day – the courage it took to take that leap off of that high diving board because it seemed to back then, it seemed like it was a mile high.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It was. Did you have any summer jobs during the high school days?
MR. AURIN: Yes, I worked about – worked from my freshman year – well, it’d be sophomore year I guess because tenth grade – through my senior year and my first year of college at Elm Grove Drug Store. It's no longer here but of course Elm Grove itself school is no longer. But right across the street was another shopping area called Elm Grove. And there was a drug store there and Mr. McGinley who lived in Clinton ran it along with Dr. Greer. They were the two pharmacists. And I worked every Wednesday and every Saturday and Sunday through high school. So my weekends were – I’d work Saturday all day and Sunday we didn’t open up till about 1:00 and I’d work from about 1:00 to 5:00 or 6:00 on Sunday. But I worked every Saturday and Sunday and Wednesday evenings/afternoons, after school Wednesday until 9:00 or whatever it was at Elm Grove Drugstore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your job duties?
MR. AURIN: I was the soda jerk and was responsible for oiling the floor. And back then they had the wood floors but they didn’t – they weren’t varnished. You’d actually put a coat – take a mop and take a coat of some kind of oil occasionally and oil them down. And I was responsible for that. Back to memories, like you and I talked about, we had our paper routes and we’d remember Mr. Smith didn’t pay last week. Well, I could take orders for six people sitting around a booth without writing it down. I could remember. I mean that’s just the way your mind was then. So I’d say this is the best store I got – I guess from Mr. McGinley. As a soda jerk of course you made milkshakes and sundaes and sandwiches. Well, when a friend – say you were my friend and you happened to stop by after school for a milkshake, well, let’s say I put you an extra scoop of ice cream in there. Well, you put that up in the blender for some reason it goes err, err, instead of whirring. Well, here would be Mr. McGinley behind the prescription. He would be leaning over there looking at me. You could hear that thing. It's supposed to be whirring. It wasn’t supposed to be chugging down. So he knew when I was putting a little extra ice cream in there for my friend Don that came in for a milkshake. But again, a great learning experience about people, just a great learning experience on how to deal with people in that setting of just being a soda jerk.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he ever say anything to you about doing that?
MR. AURIN: No, his eyes told me. I think his eyes just kind of told me that I had stepped over the line a little.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How much was the milkshake in those days?
MR. AURIN: You know I can remember you could get a half a gallon of ice cream for fifty cents. So that’s a fair amount of ice cream. So a quarter. I’d say at the most a quarter. I think you get a cherry Coke or a vanilla Coke. Don’t you remember those, cherry Cokes, vanilla Cokes? You’d get those for a nickel. And a scoop of ice cream for a nickel. And I’d say a quarter for probably is what a milkshake cost back then I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That drugstore operated for many years.
MR. AURIN: Sure did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I used to live next to that drugstore and we’d go over there. It was quite a treat to go to a drugstore with a fountain.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, it's - that’s fond memories. You’re bringing back some good old times.
MR. HUNNICUTT: After you graduated from high school, where’d you attend college?
MR. AURIN: I went to Tennessee Tech in…
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what was your major?
MR. AURIN: My major was Industrial Management. They’ve changed that now. I think they call it Industrial Technology or something. It's a mixture of Business and Engineering courses. And I thought I would be in a – at those years. I got out in ’58. I’d thought I’d go into some industrial setting for a job but we’ll talk about that in a minute, the job I ended up in. But, Don, I guess the big thing I guess I noticed by going to Cookeville was another eye opener in my life is I’d lived – I’d grown up in a pretty controlled setting. My younger years in a fenced city, still even in ’54 when I graduated Oak Ridge was still somewhat, I’d say, isolated. I don’t know how you felt but I never kind of thought much outside of Oak Ridge. In other words I just seemed like my world was the city, the boundaries of the city of Oak Ridge. So I get down to Cookeville and it's an older city. We grew up with very little crime, very little unemployment. I think the first traffic accident in Oak Ridge was in 1949. So we really grew up in still a pretty protected life. And here I get down into Cookeville it's a county Ct and there’s a courthouse and there’s people whittling around there. And there’s different socioeconomic – back in the 50s we had a pretty – I’ve always described Oak Ridge in the early years, we didn’t have social levels. We had educational levels. And so we had some fairly sophisticated people educationally. So when you go to a small – I mean my first experience – to a more rural area like Cookeville in those days, it's not as rural now as it was then, but go around the courthouse or just – it's just a different socioeconomic groups. And it opened my eyes to all that. But back to what I said about I wish I had taken more Math because I got down there and had to take college Algebra and Physics and some of these courses I just wasn’t prepared for. Now English I did, I zipped through that. we had guys – it was mainly an Engineering school then. It still is a pretty strong Engineering school. And we had some Engineering students that had zipped through all those Engineering courses and were still trying to get their freshman English before they graduated. But I was just the opposite. I didn’t have any trouble with English. I had the trouble with the Math side.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you stay in Cookeville all the time or did you come home occasionally?
MR. AURIN: I guess Cookeville is a suitcase college then and it may still be. I don’t know. A lot of kids went home on the weekends. I didn’t have any transportation. Occasionally I could find a kid from Oak Ridge that had a car to ride. But we did quite a bit of actually thumbing home. I don’t know. A lot of occasions I would thumb from Clinton – I mean start out Friday night, Friday afternoon thumbing to Oak Ridge and get back…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, you’re going to have to tell the viewing audience that would look at this video what thumbing is.
MR. AURIN: Okay, thumbing is where you actually get out on the street and put your thumb out, and back in those days that meant you needed a ride. You didn’t have the signs that the homeless or the people say now. “I need to get Atlanta or need – I’m headed this way or that way.” All you did was stick your thumb out and in those days really it wasn’t difficult to get a ride because there wasn’t a high crime rate. People weren’t worried about it. Today, there’s no way you can pick anybody up even if you want to because you don’t know what you’re picking up. The only experience I can remember, Don, is that – I mean not the only – an experience I can remember thumbing is I ended up getting in with a drunk. And we started out at Cookeville and thank goodness we get to – he knew I was going to Oak Ridge. I already told him I was going to Oak Ridge. He was headed to Knoxville. We get to Crossville and I said, whatever his name was, I said, “Bill, I just remember I’ve got an Aunt here that I’ve got – I’ve just got to see.” And so I got out at Crossville and started thumbing again to get in. But anyway, thumbing’s getting a ride and you don’t do it today.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you graduated from Cookeville, TTI I believe they called it those days, did you come back to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: Well, I first went in the service for just a short stint. They had a program, a six-month activity duty and then five and a half reserves. So I went – I think I went in in August and then got out six months later. And I did return to Oak Ridge to Decatur Road where my parents were. And starting to think about looking for a job. Well, our next-door neighbor, JC Bart, unknown to me at the time was a stockholder in the Bank of Oak Ridge. And he knew I was looking for a job. And so he, unknown to me, he mentioned my name to Harry Delozier who was manager of the Bank of Oak Ridge at that time. And so I get a call from Mr. Delozier saying, “I understand you’re looking for a job. Would you be interested in coming down and having an interview for a position we have?” I said, “Well, I ain’t got anything else.” And I’m sure going down there. So I went down and interviewed with Mr. Delozier. I called him Harry because I got to know him better after that, but Mr. Delozier. Actually the President of the bank at the time was Tommy Klein. Now he was manager of Loveman’s Department Store. They had store around Chattanooga but he was the manager of the Oak Ridge store and one of the founders of the Bank of Oak Ridge. And back then a president of the bank was more of a title and a lot of times just members of the board might hold that title. They weren’t actual bankers but they were still president of the bank. So he was president of the bank but Mr. Delozier managed the bank. So I went down and interviewed with them. They offered me the job; two hundred and ninety dollars a month. And I thought, well, that’s two hundred and ninety dollars a month more than I’m making right now. And I actually thought, Don, that I would – in my mind I said, “Well, this’ll get me started. I’m still going to start looking for a job.” Well, forty years went by and I stayed in the banking business. So I stayed in the banking business for forty years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your job when you first went to the bank?
MR. AURIN: First went to the bank – well, back then even though I had a college degree they didn’t have – banks now have training programs, management training programs. Of course, back then they probably – they hadn’t even heard of management training programs. I actually started out as a teller. I was a teller for a year, just a regular teller across the window.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the Bank of Oak Ridge first – where did it originate?
MR. AURIN: Okay, it originated – the first location was up in Jackson Square at what’s called the Old Town Hall building.
MR. HUNNICUTT: On Kentucky Avenue…
MR. AURIN: On Kentucky Avenue – in fact, the portion they occupied was – well, back then Management Services, you remember that name, did everything at Oak Ridge, they actually bid on a place that was up for bid to rent. You had to bid through MSI as I understand it, and it was actually where Western Union used to be in that particular location prior to the Bank of Oak Ridge. And I’ll tell you in a minute a little more about that location but the Bank of Oak Ridge actually – there was a group of twenty-two individuals that started discussing a bank for Oak Ridge in early to mid ’52. It became public in January of ’53, the front-page of the Oak Ridger, that there was plans for a new bank in Oak Ridge called the Bank of Oak Ridge. And Tom Lane, who was then head of Industrial Relations for Union Carbide was one of the originators of the Bank of Oak Ridge. And he was the temporary chairman. And he’s the one that made the announcement that this group of twenty-two had signed an application for a charter for the Bank of Oak Ridge in Oak Ridge. So that was announced in January of ’53. And I think what I’d like to do, if you don’t mind, I’d like to read to you the names of those twenty-two individuals that had the foresight or the thought that there was a need for a bank in Oak Ridge, a full service bank. In a minute I’ll talk a little about Hamilton.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me ask you a question before you do that. and it’ll be a pleasure for you to do that. The only bank I remember was the Hamilton Bank in the square in the back of where you’re describing. If I remember right that was the only bank the city had. Is that correct?
MR. AURIN: Correct! And here was the stipulation that – the way that came about, Hamilton National Bank of Knoxville was asked by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1943 to provide banking services to Oak Ridge. Now the reason for that is that the banking laws back in that time in ’43 you could not branch outside your county, okay. The government saw the need with seventy some thousand people here. The government saw the need that they needed some kind of banking services here. So the U.S. Treasury Department gave the Hamilton Bank of Knoxville permission to open two, what they call facilities. They didn’t call them banks. They called them facilities in Oak Ridge. Technically they were limited to depository services. In other words they could take deposits, checking, savings accounts, but they were not to do anything beyond that. They weren’t empowered to do anything beyond that like lending. All that had to be done in Knoxville if they were going to do any. Mainly it was a way for people to get their payroll checks cashed and to do whatever normal exchange, write checks, and that kind of stuff. So that was in September of ’43 when they came into Oak Ridge with two facilities. And that remained until the Bank of Oak Ridge – well, it even remained after, but then the Bank of Oak Ridge in 1953 was formed. Yeah, actually the first day the bank opened was in June of ’53. The announcement was made in January and the bank actually opened there in Jackson Square in June of ’53. And I’ll tell you a little more about Hamilton as probably discussed, or that situation. But, yeah, they were the only bank at the time and supposedly limited to just depository services. And I think this group saw that, this group of individuals saw the need for a bank that, if you’ll think about it, at that time we were – it wasn’t going to be long before we were converting from a government owned, government operated town to a privately owned, self-governing municipality. So that was in that switchover. And then that was in ’56. The bank organized in ’53. The city incorporated in ’56. Then in ’57 the government started to sell houses. Well, the Bank of Oak Ridge was very right positioned to really help that economic – that growth right there, that service there. We made more mortgage loans and helped people buy their houses, and all the remodeling that was going on to the houses that were bought. So this group apparently saw this coming and saw the need. See, the Hamilton technically could not have done that or should not have according to their powers, could not actually make those loans unless the people went to Knoxville to get the loans. Now I’m not sure they didn’t make a few here but anyway, that was the situation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now read the individuals that started the bank.
MR. AURIN: I just think if I can read this. It's very fine print but these are people I think you’ll recognize some of the names, if not most of them. In fact, I highlighted some. I told you – maybe I didn’t tell that story. Let me side track for just a second. After my father – I’m assuming he was laid off after the war. That’s the only thing I can assume because I don’t remember much discussion about it, but I can remember my mother and dad making sandwiches for a fella named Walter Oshner. He had a canteen service here in town and sold sandwiches and stuff and probably went out to plants with it, and this, that, and the other. Well, my mom and dad would work every night making those sandwiches at his shop for the next day’s delivery. And I can only assume that my dad was out of work during that period of time. Then he became – did I tell you, then he became a purchasing agent at the school. I don’t know if I mentioned that to you or not.
MR. HUNNICUTT: No, you didn’t.
MR. AURIN: Okay. Well, he – after that period of unemployment, I’m going to call it unemployment I guess it was – he was fortunate enough to get a job at the Oak Ridge school system. And he went in as Purchasing Agent, and back then the school system was pretty thriving. It had seven elementary schools. I think that included Scarboro. There was the junior high school and high school. And I mean a bunch of kids and a bunch of need for – so he stayed there for twenty, twenty-five years, he retired. But he was purchasing agent for the Oak Ridge school system. I don’t know how I got off on that. But those twenty-one were, of course, Tom Lane, who I’ve already mentioned, McKee Alexander, John C. Barber, remember he had the Buick place. CC Brill was into Insurance, Carl Bruner, the store, Tommy Klein, I mentioned him before; Thomas Kleins, John De Persio, Jack Diamond, both those doctors, AH Gossard, William Van Hamilton, Eugene L. Joyce, AD McIntosh, Don J. McKay, the Oak Ridger, Sam Miller, remember worked with Horns at Samuels, Dana Nance, Walter Oshner, and that’s the name I mentioned a minute ago my father worked for a short time, William Pugh, Henry Ruley, Roger Swope, Glen Van Slyke, and Frank W. Wilson. Remember Judge Wilson. I remember Frank Wilson. Those were the original organizers.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The forefathers of the Bank of Oak Ridge, a lot of the doctors involved.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, there was three or four that were doctors.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They had a great vision didn’t they?
MR. AURIN: They did and they’re the ones that raised the two among them a quarter million dollars that became the capital for the bank to organize to capitalize the bank. Now there were thirty-two other individuals that expressed interest in addition to them of buying stock of the Bank of Oak Ridge at that time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, the Bank of Oak Ridge continued for quite a few years but were they bought by another banking organization? What’s the story there?
MR. AURIN: Well, I joined then in ’59 and I left in ’84. I left in ’84. I took a job with Third National was in town at the time. They’re now Sun Trust but it was Third National. And I went over and I became President and CEO of Third National that operated in Anderson and Campbell County. And then the year after I left that would have been ’85 the bank was sold. They changed their name actually from Bank of Oak Ridge to Energy Bank. I don’t know if you remember that but they changed the name. and the reason for the change [Inaudible] during that time was we were interested in getting outside of Oak Ridge and delivering our services. And there were certain banks in trouble at that particular time in history and the FDIC would – if a bank got where it was near about ready to fail the FDIC would ask surrounding banks if they were interested in bidding on the deposit base of that particular bank. And if you were the high bidder then you got that deposit base and able to operate out of wherever that bank was located. Well, the bank then decided, well, if we’re going to get outside of Oak Ridge the name of Bank of Oak Ridge isn’t going to go too well in Kingston. I mean it should be something else. So Energy was the thing of the day at the Lab and everything else. Everything we talked about was Energy so the name became Energy Bank. We did end up buying the First National Bank – I mean the Kingston Bank and Trust Company from the FDIC and we bought the First National Bank of Oneida. So we ended up in those locations through purchasing from the deposit base or bidding on a deposit base from there. So anyway that was the reason for the name change. I leave in ’84. Commerce Union buys the Energy Bank or the old Bank of Oak Ridge in ’85. And then it goes through a number of changes. In fact, we used to kid as competition they were my competition then. We used to call them the Velcro Bank because it had to change the sign so many times. But they went from the Energy Bank to Commerce Union, then Commerce Union became Sovereign. And then Sovereign, CNS of Atlanta bought Sovereign. So then it was named CNS Sovereign. And then it was Nations Bank. And then Nations Bank was bought by Bank of America. So the original Bank of Oak Ridge is now Bank of America.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what the rate of interest was on a home loan back in the early days when they first started?
MR. AURIN: I would guess around four percent; somewhere in that neighborhood. There was a time when it got about eighteen percent. I mean the interest rates got up to sky high but…
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were some of the prices of the homes that were sold in Oak Ridge at that time?
MR. AURIN: Well, if you remember when the houses were sold in Oak Ridge I think my father paid for the C house that we were in, forty-three hundred dollars. So I don’t know whether D went for more and B went a little less. I’d say the B’s were in the five, six thousand range probably.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what do you remember the requirements if I came in to the bank and I wanted to get a loan to buy my D house? What would I have to put up as far as money is concerned?
MR. AURIN: Well, the general rule of thumb, the best I can remember back that early and probably to the extent it was is generally you’d need twenty percent down. And the bank would finance eighty percent. That was a general rule. We really got away from that. The banking industry really got away from that and that’s what caused all of our problems in ’08 if you recall the whole economy going. I think that was the start of it. When we started getting into home loans of nothing down, a hundred percent financing, an old banker told me one time, “I guess,” he says, “if you don’t own any part of it you don’t care too much about it. And so if you don’t have anything in it just leave it, walk off and leave it.” I mean what had he lost, you know. But I think that was getting away from – they’re back to it now, the twenty percent down. And it makes it difficult, and my wife’s a realtor, and it makes it more difficult now to find an eligible buyer because the twenty percent’s hard to come by. But I still think it's the right thing to have that. I guess it was during the Clinton administration was when the things really changed as far as lending. I mean the thought throughout the country was everybody should own a home. Well, that’s a good thought. Everybody should own a home. But you got to be able to pay for it, too. So everybody – it's not even feasible that everybody can own a home because of the requirements to keep it up and even to live in it. We’re getting kind of astray I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: These individuals that started the bank, is it like any business, as the business prospers they get money for their investment? How does that work as far as they – if you’re a backer of a bank?
MR. AURIN: Well, it's just like any stock company really. I mean the form is you buy into, say a bank and you get so many shares for that. Well, generally then there’s the way – there’s a market for those shares depending on how well or how bad you do. The better you do the more valuable those shares are. Now there’s different ways those get priced. If it's like a Bank of Oak Ridge in those days that didn’t have a real marketplace, they weren’t listed on an exchange, you know, stock exchange, it's more or less word of mouth or just what you, Don, think it's worth and you and Bill think it's worth. And in some way it all kind of blends into a figure that it's about. So as the Bank of Oak Ridge did better I think the best I can remember their stock got up to thirty-two dollars and fifty cents. And maybe it started at twenty or fifteen. But it sold for – a bank that’s not listed on the stock exchange the way it becomes valued is sort of – I don’t know, it's sort of a – they look at what your earnings were in the past year compared to the other years, or an investor does, and thinks that it's going to grow some more so they’re willing to pay X amount. And once they- they kind of set it. If I go to you and say, “I’d like to sell some of my Bank of Oak Ridge stock, and what do you want for it?” And I’ll say, “Well, the last I heard it sold for twenty – I want twenty-one fifty,” and you got to decide whether you think it's worth twenty-one fifty. But so it's not – you don’t get any direct payment from the bank. It's what you can sell your stock for. Now the only other thing you can get is the dividend if the Bank declares a dividend on your stock. Then yes, you get a check from the bank from the dividend that they paid out for that particular share.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When did you meet your future wife and what’s her name?
MR. AURIN: Belinda Baker was her maiden name. I knew Belinda in high school but only knew her. She was a freshman when I was a senior. And actually it came about through the banking business. In fact, she was – Mike Mal, my friend that I said about Camelot a while ago, he and I were out at the Country Club one evening and of all the things playing Bingo back in those years. And in walks Belinda with a friend. I think it was Bill Maddox’s wife.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Billy.
MR. AURIN: No, no, no, Savannah. And Mike was saying I think Savannah and Belinda were talking about – Belinda had just order a car and had not worked out any financing. And she’s [Inaudible] Belinda’s telling me this with Mike – he’s at the Bank of Oak Ridge. So the next day Belinda comes down to the bank and tells me she has ordered a car. And I said, “Well, what kind of down payment do you have?” And she says, “What does that mean?” And I told her that back then we needed five percent or whatever it was. And she said, “Well, I’ve got an uncle over at [Inaudible] that sold the car. He maybe can loan me five hundred dollars. I don’t know.” And I can remember telling her, I said, well look, I think it's going to be a hard – I knew it was going to be a hard sell for us to make it. I said you go to the dealer and tell them – and I was really trying to get the dealer to finance it which I ended up getting him to do. I said, “Tell him we’ll do it for four percent but I’ve got to have five hundred dollars down.” So she worked out a better deal at the dealership to get it. But before she left I said, “Belinda, I’ll tell you what, there’s a meeting in Knoxville, there’s a bank meeting in Knoxville and there’s a dinner meeting and would you like to go with me?” And so that was our first, I guess you called it a date. And so that’s how I really – and so I ended up paying for that car after all. We got married six months later.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have children?
MR. AURIN: Two children, of course, who are grown. Our oldest is Craig. He lives here in town, works for an environmental company out of Norcross, Georgia. And he’s an environmental engineer. And he’s married to Wendy, his wife, and they have two boys and a girl. The two boys are stepsons. She had been previously married but they were only four and five when Wendy and Craig got married so their his sons really. And then they have a seven-year-old who is our youngest granddaughter, McKenzie. Then our daughter Amy – Craig went to East Tennessee State, Amy went to Auburn. I always hold that against her but she went to Auburn. And she ended up getting her CPA. She’s no longer practicing. She has three children. One just graduated from Auburn last year. I’ve got a sophomore granddaughter at Auburn, that’s Emily. And Cameron had gotten out earlier. And then Lucy is a senior in high school and so she’ll be going to Auburn more than likely. So they live in Marietta, Georgia.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You met your wife – she’s a realtor today. She still works.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, she owns Realty 100. That’s her company and she’s been in business over twenty-five years and still at it. I just stay home and spend her money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How have you seen the city grow or maybe not grow since you first came to Oak Ridge?
MR. AURIN: As you know we’ve had our troubles with growth. We’ve stayed about the same population-wise for a number of years, twenty-nine, twenty-seven, thirty thousand. I guess what concerns me, I guess, about the city now it's totally different than it was when we grew up. I know that you agree but I mean the demographics are changing and changing pretty fast, and not for the better in my opinion, just the demographics. As you recall we were a town of average age of twenty-nine back in the ‘40s and had the highest population of PhD per thousand in the world probably. And all that’s changed. And I think it still goes back to, and I’ve observed as President of the Chamber, or Chairman of the Chamber, and I’ve been involved in various parts of the economic development of the city. But I still think it comes back to housing. It's a big part of our – it's always been our problem. Everybody’s studied it and never figured it out. And it's becoming a similar problem now with our changing demographics and our aging of our people. And our cemestos now, our parents, I mean the older people that – well, I’m a parent now but we’re too old to have our parents still living. But they’re getting to where they’re of age that they can’t keep their property up. And a lot of when they sell it's going into rental property. And that changes the demographics, the makeup of the type of individual in Oak Ridge. And this is my terminology but – and I wish we could have taken advantage of it but I guess it's due to our land. Nobody’s figured out exactly why we can’t make it in housing. But Harden Valley, how Harden Valley has sprung up, and I call it the new Oak Ridge because that’s basically where your – most of your [Inaudible] people are going. We love – we would love to have that type of student in our high school. We don’t have the number of [Inaudible] children in our school system that we used to have. And that makes a difference. I mean as far as you don’t see as many Merit scholars on the front page as you used to see. You used to see twenty, and maybe you see five now, Merit scholars.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think the reason – some of the problem may be that we don’t have a one shopping center for people to shop in? Our mall is not really a mall anymore.
MR. AURIN: Yeah. Well, you know I guess I should ask my wife that shops more than – I don’t know. I can’t answer it directly but when somebody first comes into Oak Ridge is it that noticeable? Is that something they’re really looking at or what is it they’re looking at? It's bound to be – it can’t be a plus. Now how big a negative it is I don’t know. It’s definitely an eye sore or something we need to do something about, and I think everybody’s hands are tied because Council can’t. It’s private property. I mean you can’t – the Council can’t or city officials can’t tell them what to do, so. But housing is still a problem. I think – I don’t know what the answer is. I wish we had a way of getting more people that work at the plants to live here. In fact, Don, I think it's out – I’m sure this is accurate but pretty accurate, or at least I was told this, that in our school system now, and I wouldn’t have thought this a few years ago. Over a third of our students throughout the system are on some kind of assistance program. And so there’s a big change in Oak Ridge as far as from when we grew up till now. I feel I’m still high on Oak Ridge. I think it's got a lot of potential. We just still got to solve the housing problem. I’m so glad to see council taking action on – and the city taking action on blighted areas. They’ve now got certain things done through I think the legislature that allows them to do certain things that can bring a property up to where somebody can live in it and not have such rundown areas. But they got a lot of work to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And do you feel Oak Ridge is becoming a retirement community because of the age of the people still there?
MR. AURIN: Yeah, we’re definitely – we’ve got more than our – than the average of retired people but that’s not all bad. I don’t think that’s all bad.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, Oak Ridge is a secret city. I believe we’re still a secret city in some ways as far as attractions of businesses and people to come into the city. Turkey Creek has hurt us because it's so close and it has all that variety of shopping.
MR. AURIN: Yeah, with the way this road system is now, and everything, you can be wherever you want to shop with whatever you’re looking for. I mean you can be fifteen or twenty minutes from it. so that’s the big thing. I don’t know how they’re going to solve for Oak Ridge. I don’t think we’ll ever see retail back here. I mean to this level that some people want it just because of that factor. And you can understand. I mean if you were going – if you – and I don’t know the retail business but I know you got to have a certain catchment area and a certain this and certain that. But when they look and see that it takes some people maybe twelve minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes to be able to shop that’s some tough competition to come up against.
MR. HUNNICUTT: If you have a few words to describe your life as you’ve lived it in Oak Ridge what would those words be?
MR. AURIN: I’m going to steal my friend’s word, Camelot. We did grow up in Camelot. I mean there couldn’t have been a better setting to grow up. No crime, no unemployment. I mean you didn’t worry. Our parents didn’t have to worry about anything, even traffic. I’d say traffic fatalities weren’t until – close to 1950. And so I just say I’m fortunate to have grown up in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's been my pleasure to interview you. I know this interview will be an addition to Oak Ridge history. Someone in the future may be writing a paper about Oak Ridge history and they pull this interview up and some of your testimony will be used in their paper. And I thank you very much for your time.
MR. AURIN: Well, thank you, Don, for inviting me and it's been a pleasure and I just hope that it will be of some value to someone.
MR. HUNNICUTT: One thing, show us the pin you have on your collar and tell us about that. I almost forgot that.
MR. AURIN: Oh, I don’t know if you can pick that out but this…
MR. HUNNICUTT: Turn it a little bit around that way.
MR. AURIN: This is my father’s – he called it an A pin. It says on the top Manhattan Project with a big A. and then right under that the word bomb, so A Bomb. And right under that I don’t know but there’s three, sort of, columns and I don’t know. It looks more like K-25 to me. But I don’t know if it's a – do you know, Don, what that is? You said your father got one of these.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It's a symbol for the Corps of Engineers, I believe it is.
MR. AURIN: Okay, is that the Corps of Engineers symbol? So I think each worker after it was announced that there was an A Bomb received one of these. And so I just wore it today in memory of my dad.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, thank you again for your time for this interview.
MR. AURIN: Thank you Don.
[END OF INTERVIEW]